Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

So.....

Mark me down for one absence on my part of the San Diego draft. I'm very, very embarassed on missing this draft entirely. I get the whole thing set up and going, and then I completely forget about it today. It's 100% on me.

Thank you to those who took over the draft today. It's a bit difficult taking over someone else on the fly a lot of times in FF.

I won't miss anymore from this point on.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

And we've avoided the first boot of the season. Bobo Brigade has sent a list for Pittsburgh.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

And LA

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

Just as a reminder, tomorrow (12/1) is an off day as far as drafts are concerned. Of course, if there's a draft up, feel free to make a pick if it's your turn.

And, for what I think is the first time ever, we haven't issued a boot at the first opportunity! All players have checked in at least once.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

Folks, we seem to have a slight problem. And it's not on our end, it's on FIRST's end.

Very simply, the FRCLinks method of getting the team lists goes to the older version of the site. The older version and the newer version are not always in sync. So, we've had some picks that are rejected because they aren't on the newer version.


Until further notice (or FRCLinks updates their links to the new pages), we will be using the NEW page for event team lists. If someone claims a team using the OLD list (and the team isn't shown on the NEW list), we will consider that an invalid claim until the NEW list is updated. If you post in the thread that such-and-such a team is on the OLD list, we'll play the waiver game* at a later time.**

*Waiver game: Teams that become available after a draft are "waiver" teams. Because I'm lazy, the priority this year will be reverse order of signup to start with. Highest priority to make a claim gets the team, as long as the claim is made within 3 days from the first claim being made.

**Palmetto gets a grandfather clause, and maintains current status.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

*sigh*

This decision is fine (we needed a call sooner or later), but it's worth mentioning that as of right now, it's an absolute pain in the $@#$@#$@# to automatically import a reliable team list...

...that is to say that TBA isn't a reliable source, FIRST API won't have 2016 data until the 2016 season starts, USFIRST is apparently out of date, and firstinspires is (currently) remarkably difficult to extract data from.

I'm not really expecting you to do anything, just my little rant.
- Sunny G.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

I'm not particularly happy either.

When I manage to get some time (probably Wednesday or so) I plan to leave a note in FIRST's site feedback calling attention to the discrepancies. It's on their end, therefore it's their problem.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

The easiest way I have found to import teams for drafts is going to this page:
1)http://www.firstinspires.org/team-event-search

2)Finding the event (which is a lot faster on the new website)

3)Then copying the team information table and pasting it into excel. For me it creates a single column of cells with all of the data.

4)The last step is to sort the data from A-Z which puts the teams in order and all at the top.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

Sidenote to this:
I think I found an error in the draft assistant. When I have had drafts with large numbers of teams the bottom row doesn't seem to clear when a team is picked from it.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

I noticed that as well, it seems that it doesn't handle edge cases (ends of lines included). I'll take a look later in the week, maybe Thursday. Thought I'd cleared that but maybe I confused it instead.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

Issue:
Seeding order assigned in any draft, especially those of District drafts greatly impact the performance of a Fantasy FIRST team in their respective District Championship.

Important points:
- The difference between two consecutive seed positions at a given event will not necessarily have a resultant score that differentiates in a linear fashion.

- Seeding positions are also not comparable between events. For example, certain events have more dominant teams at the top end, resulting in a wide swing in the max vs. minimum point potential. Other events may have a wider distribution, with a deeper roster, allowing late seeds to pull in more fantasy points from their position in the draft, compared to other shallower events.

Data Analysis:
I compiled a spreadsheet of 2015 Fantasy FIRST data to analyze the impact of seed order on draft outcomes.


- While scoring data is easily available for manipulation at any given event, seed data is not. *I'm tracking seed position this year*

- The important piece of data to note, is that fantasy teams are not statistically likely to move very far from their original rank, based on initial seed.

-In a 10 person draft, a fantasy team will on average only move ~3 seed positions (absolute), in rank from their initial seed.

Proposed Solution:
In order to get one step closer to similar seed benefits across events, the average seeding order should be statistically uniform. This means, if a team receives a first seed at one event, they should be statistically likely to receive a last seed at another to match. Their average seed order across the total events in the specified pool should be nearly the same as all others Fantasy teams. While the proposed solution is not a perfect one, it should help to remove some of the statistical advantages given out to specific teams, based on a system with ‘entirely’ random seeding generation.

Here’s the algorithm that would need to be developed:


You have 7 Districts, to place 10 Fantasy teams (A-J) in. There can’t be multiple instances of a Fantasy team in any given District. The goal is to maintain a similar average seed across all fantasy teams. You don’t care how the distribution resolves itself, but it will likely naturally result in a bell curve. The algorithm should randomly generate solutions to the table with a *small* average seed deviation.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

I agree with Navid. Though I'm new to FF, it seems our team has noticed based upon drafting that certain teams pretty much pick the same as us. We might all just have bad systems of measuring team but I suspect it's more likely we have come upon good systems of measurements that will be inherently similar. That being said, there are some differences but those differences are miniscule compared to the effect pick order has. I like Navid's changes that keep it random but make sure everyone has the same average pick rank. That way we are lessening the impact of the pick order which inherently makes the small differences between our picklists matter more in the whole scope of things.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

Well, our current system is more automated than that. If we can't figure out a way to get into firstinspires, then that seems like the only option.

It's worth mentioning that the usfirst domain actually appears to be the more "correct" version right now. GTRE is showing 118 on usfirst but 118 is not listed on firstinspires. After confirming with 118, they are going to GTRE.

For what it's worth, I think that's a compelling reason to stick to the usfirst domain.

- Sunny G.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

Consider this our first waiver ;)

118 for 4343

Also, I have e-mailed Frank, he responded. I'll post here when he has more information.

Re: [FF]: 2016 Season Long Fantasy FIRST
 

Echoing on what Navid has said. People who received high drafts in the first round of the district drafts had a significant advantage, and on the way back I don't think reversing the draft order compensates enough.

:(