Real Week 2 update
 

In day 1 of Central valley we actually worked our way up to #1 by the time the day ended...1678 will likely pass us due to not playing yet. We should end up Alliance captain 1,2 or 3. with three to play.

We got there by only losing 1 game , breaching every time, had on Capture with 254 and crew.

1678 and 254 are the best here, we just happen to be very good at collecting RP

So far we had to replace 4 of the pulleys from the treads (cracked again), my advice to teams with tank treads consider putting on Revision 4 before your competition and of course harden all connectors.

We upgrade our drive camera to http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Webca.../dp/B006JH8T3S and its fantastic

As for telescoping poles this central valley competition has tons of teams with them 1678 is 30 foot high it seems.

Team 8 built a screen to obscure Birdseye views out of duct tape.
Anyhow off to Day 2..will update afterwards.

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Note that R9 probably makes such a screen illegal.

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Any issues with lag in the picture on the DS? What size of picture are you displaying on the DS? What camera were you using before?

Thanks.

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According to my driver the lag is 1 second, size was a big window, we were using the Microsoft 3000 prior.. My driver did much better with the new camera he really liked it.

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What is the framerate that you set on your camera? Ours is set for 10fps and it has virtually no lag.

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Knock Knock Knocking on Finals.... Three semi-finals and three almosts.

Last year we (1836,696) lost by a single scoring play to the ultimate winners in Ventura (1717,330 ,2761)
This year in San Diego we beat the #1 alliance (2-0) as the 8th alliance losing to eventual winners Alliance 5 in SF...out shooter had stuck ball issues which got fixed for the most part in CV. had our shooter been working we would have given 5 all they could handle but alas it happened then.

This year in Central Valley we lost by not coordinating "batter placement" to castle capture at the end in SF3:

In QF in CV we beat the alliance with our previous partner from SD 812... in two games.

In CV game 3 semi..
Us and 973 had the castle to 0 and both Us and 2135 were on the batter but both 2135 and 973 were trying for the center batter spot... 973 had to leave to try left spot and ran out of time..had they done that we would have been in the finals and even if we lost as captains would have earned a wildcard to the final world championship. just like last year in super tough competitions we were one play short... so close.

I'm super pleased we racked up 27 ranking points that was good for #3 rank.
The world high score was set by 1678, 3970 and 254..... 210 points
-------------------------------------

Some thoughts on day 2 in CV...

Well we broke our hex shaft again! This time we were ready with a steel replacement and got it replaced over lunch.

We broke a strap on our shooter cage.

For elims we neutered our scaler as it was a liability in CV coming apart during the matches. Even though we scaled in SD in CV it was bent and once we got it fixed we never had an opportunity to use it while trying to stay in top 3.

We also ditched our goal shot camera ( to be able to reverse through Low bar to shave a few seconds) as we never quite got auto aim working so we secured that also... we we a simple Auto, Low goal, breacher withe a super fast intake bot in the eliminations in CV. We performed MUCH better than in San Diego, we were an asset and not a liability finally craked top 15 OPR in CV.

Our third bot 2135 had to rebuilt their drive train so most matches were just us and 973 at full strength. Conversely the other alliance we faced was down 1 in game 1 of SF. Its balanced out.... the executed has we executed better we would have won game 3.

Scheduling curiosity and my observations over past two seasons ... I see no valid reason why 5137 had to play 1678 THREE times in 10 Qualifications (One with Two against one with 254 too) also its sort of weird 1678 and 254 played together in a late qualification. I noticed this trend last year where top bots often were paired together. I have a statistical degree does not seem like a random enough scheduling. Nonetheless teams especially those without "world credentials" seeming need to play above (scheduling and calls) each year until they finally crack through t the elite status.

There was another late qual game where 1678's (corrected) alliance seeming lost but upon further review it was a tie..that was a critical RP to get them to #1 past us at the time. I'm not saying it was a bad call/review necessarily but again an eyebrow raising..huh? I did not think it possible for 1678 to lose yet they apparently did until the tied decision.

As for calls forget bumper hang penalties..the judges did not call any and bots were constantly harassed in outworks. The world class teams still were successful as was that super strong rookie team Unirex. They have the hardest shot I've ever seen and only swerve drive there I saw.

Three robots were flipped/stuck in a QF game it was the triple tortuga.

Oh and when we were alliance captain 2 when they were talking about the teams ..it was all this team won this , this team won that , this team is amazing..they came to us do you have anything to say? (Literally "I got nothing to add"). Wow thanks. Guess its just world creds that play. To be fair in eliminatios they finally dug up some things to say..Like RAS, SF in SD etc.

Game lessons... LG/breacher with fast intake and cycle times is a valid design choice (lots of wasted time on missed HG shots from teams), we never did CDF in either competition and still won consitently (we probably could..did in practice but it was our slowest defense to solo cross.

Well that's it another year in the can...we'll be back next year and rev up again. Perhaps one of these years we finally break through again to add to our RAS campaign.

I may see some of you in OC if I decide to ref ... so good luck to all we had a blast in both competitions and met a ton of great teams , it was super exciting to work with 973 and 2135 awesome . Also had a blast with 1159/812 in SD beating the #1 alliance as #8 in two games was very cool too. The tank drive was the correct choice for us.

We've been very fortunate to earn rank high enough to pair with some of the best bots/teams in the world (973, 696) these last two seasons.

A successful and fun season overall.

Key lessons:

Don't get too complex in planning stage..we wasted tons of time on auto aim and planning sensors...things we never used
Finish prior to week 6 of build (Try to build it by week 4 and consider a practice bot)
Anything not 100% reliable need fixed prior to competition (The ball stuck in our shooter really hampered chance in SD)
Bring spare parts..in SD we had to scramble for the hex shaft.
Questionable systems that don't look that secure (as in may bend )...will BEND... so don't have bendable stuff.

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Remember practice lag and field lag are different... not sure on framerate we had ZERO lag in the pit. 1 second lag on the field of play with new camera and more with the 3000

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So a couple of things, it is not that rare to have teams face each other multiple times at the same event, when the event has less than 50 teams. If you think about it you are at an event with 49 teams and you are going to play 10 matches. So that means that 48 teams get to fill the 50 spots that make up you alliance partners and the opposing alliance, in a perfect world that would mean that random team X and Y would play with and against you to make things fair, but alas we are not in a perfect world. At Palmetto, an event with 64 teams we never played with or against our eventual winning alliance partners 4451 and 1369 but we did play both with and against 2200. This is because in order to maximize the amount of time between matches for teams usually the algorithm will draw the teams for your next match from a set of 5 matches: The two before your match, your match, and the two after your match. Personally I wish there was a way to set the algorithm so based on event size it could limit the amount of time teams appear together in a match but I would match rather have the time to fix my robot, come up with a strategy and rest my drive team.

Top bots seemingly always being paired up together is also not to rare. Like I said above you have 48 teams to fill out the 50 slots to make up the matches you are in, so you have a 40% chance of them being an alliance partner and a 60% chance of them being on the opposing alliance not to weird. It is only noticeable when top teams are seemingly always randomly together because they are top teams, if you ran a statistical analysis of how many times a set of two teams have gotten paired up at a particular event versus how many times it could happen (ie number of times on an alliance over number of times both teams have attended the event), you may be surprised to find a lot of teams that the algorithm "likes" to pair up together.

I just checked 254's match results and in quals they went 9 wins 1 loss. They never tied, so there was no critical RP getting them up to the number 2. Also 254 finished with 30 RP versus the 27 RP for your team, they would have needed to lose 2 more of their matches to have had them fall below you in the rankings.

That sucks, no other word for it but also remember those other teams earned those world/regional credentials. 973 your alliance partner is a former world champion which they earned, should your team have gotten their regional rookie all star award mentioned, yes, but that doesn't take away from the amazing things that those other teams have accomplished.

At Orlando we had a similar thing done in the finals the number 1 seed was made up of 233 (13 Regional Wins, and 5 Einstein Appearances) 180 (7 Regional Wins, and 2012 World Champion) and 4592 (First Time in a Finals), versus 2383(1 regional Win, and a subdivision finalist), 3556 (1 finalist appearance) and 2797. 2797 Knight & Nerdy was competing in their 8th season and had just won the first official award in their entire existence the previous day with an imagery award and had never made it past quarter finals at a regional. Do you want to know what I thought when these things were announced, it wasn't "wow look how bad those other teams are in comparison to 180 and 233" It was "wow we are finally getting the previous generation (2383 9 years, 2797 8 years, and 3556 6 years) competing with the veterans of their time (180 19 years, 233 18 years) and this generation (4592 4 years) making their debut with the big boys." Don't discredit your own accomplishments, it is a big deal for such a young team to be competing at the level you are especially with the giants of your state at the event, any team who you want to notice you, noticed you, and if they didn't you didn't want them to notice you in the first place.

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Thanks 179 for the World Class perspective on my young three year observations starting with a team from scratch.... I was there and there was a tie. I'm fairly certain it was with Blue alliance is wrong as I see no ties and there were several in CV. I'm pretty sure I am remembering it correctly as I knew it affected dropping us to 3. That 1RP versus 0RP was huge (at that point).

I appreciate the thorough explanation of how you see the schedule making.

We do pride ourselves on being the scrappy low resource team that seems to design effective bots and we take pride with getting the 27 RP in 10 which is similar to your own 22 in week 0.5 in 8 (within 0.75)... in qualifications. I love your bots I look forward to seeing them every year. We will earn our way back in one day and hope we share same side of the glass one day.

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Well you need to get your memory checked because we were 9-1.

Our ranking had no bearing on anything anyways. It was completely irrelevant that we seeded 2nd. Everyone moved up one after we were picked.

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Sorry 254 I think it was 1678 I remembered incorrectly you both blend together on the awesome 1,2 scale (according to match data 9-0-1) I got confused they 1678 had a tie..awesome job BTW

Like I said I could be wrong it was a long weekend. I stand corrected.

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Yup, the screen was ruled illegal due to vision obstruction. The original intent was to block boulders so we replaced it with a netted duct tape version that functioned well in match 10.

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Somebody with more knowledge please feel free to correct me. The match schedule is an algorithm. It can be tweaked a bit, but you cannot tell it to favor certain pairings.

If we were on the field with the likes of 254, we would be in the same boat as you. :] But there is a fact sheet you fill out to give to the announcer. It seems that it is always one of those last minute things that doesn't get the attention it deserves when the teams fill it out.

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Looking at the match schedule, you guys played against us twice (Q35, Q74), with us once (Q20), and with 254 once (Q52). Having to play against a good team twice is unfortunate, but at least you weren't in match Q67!

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Yup wish we were in the end matches though :)

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As a follow up to my scheduling observations from CVR here are the key matches where "top teams" met on the same field of play as partners or as opponents. Of course there were many good teams but these tend to be the best by historic achievements. 179 peaked my interest to look a bit deeper. My definition of top teams are those I noted going in based on achievement. Forgive me if I missed someone.

as of now, every team # in picture identified is less than number 1679

What I did was only extracted every game in which top teams crossed paths or partnered up and the results are seemingly not random at first glance of the same field games.

Three matches the top teams faced against each other BUT there were SIX matches where they were also alliance partners

I did our matches and got TWO such pairings whereas 5136 had more (they also made WC) and we are within one Team# of them.

So I think the algorithm may weight previous WC pairings more favorably than head to heads. Again I only looked at games where giants crossed paths in qualification.

It can seem random (about two three games per, probably that way for most teams) but one would think that Head to head versus Side by Side alliance members would be more even. Not off by a about a factor of two.

I get what 179 is saying also about game scheduling and time between matches also one regional is not enough sample size but it is curious to look at. Like I said I noticed this last year, I see patterns quite well my job as scout/strategy mentor and it carries on into this year. Perhaps with more years I will see it start to even out. For now it doesn't really matter other than to satisfy my curiosity on how match scheduling really occurs.

The colors have nothing to do with my personal ranking of individual teams. Rather its just so I can identify the different top teams with different shades of green to better visualize it.

I'll run similar test next year to see if it is similar or balances it out assuming we go to one the powerhouse regional's again..they are fun. Hard to miss them around CA.

In the end I would not doubt this is done for entertainment value, as a bunch of 50 point games is not real exciting (140 is) however its not the most efficient way of getting as 179 calls it the "next generation" to show up regularly at worlds . They seem to have an uphill swim and scheduling in regional's could explain some of it. Perhaps it can be a reason why some don't make it for quite a while. But occasionally they do punch through. In no way did this affect us we got what we earned in both regional's and could not ask for more than that this season.

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@boltman: I can't help but feel for you a little bit. That's also considering that they changed the schedule, and ours got ridiculously harder in the second one (even though we weren't functional 99% of the time.) As for the one loss that 254 sustained, it was with us. Our CAN cycle broke, and their battery wasn't clipped in properly. We lost by 4 points, and if you watch that match, if 5499 moved two more feet, a breach would have been granted, giving a slight win. Another park, you'd be winning for sure, but obviously the dynamics would have changed so that doesn't mean anything. I will say this though, even in my time with 294 (2 world championships, few regional wins, countless finalist results) we often got left with horrendous schedules. Hell, they went undefeated in quals at LA with a horrendous one this year! Not to mention being left in the dust by admittedly bad referee calls. I'm not entirely sure it's purely because they're a good team, just that at this event the historically better ones got a bit better off. As much as I love Jim, I'd understand why he should have kept accomplishment bragging relevant to the current year, but that's above my volunteer-grade.

I loved inspecting your bot, and I love seeing awesome 5k+ teams! I'm really disappointed your season is over, and y'all definitely deserved better. I hope the momentum stays up, and can't wait to see y'all bigger and better in the future.

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Thank you for the kind words, we had a great time at both regionals and actually enjoyed the two weeks in a row we put a lot of mileage on Varsam in the past 20 days since bag and tag. Might do the same next year. As our lead mentor said to me at CV "not sure what we would have done with weeks in between"

It does sting a bit to be so ridiculously close two years in a row in world class regionals. I post my thoughts and experiences to help other teams, its what I do during robot season. I always look forward to robot season a love seeing our team grow each year. Sure we'd love to be in worlds again who wouldn't? We were very fortunate to go as rookies (and placed 90th) , I did not think we were the best rookie that year in SD so we were surprised. Last two years we earned it and had really good shots at i its fun to be able to hang with some of the best on the planet. That's why I was personally a bit put off by the "pray for those in CV "comments leading up to week 2. I saw it as a fun time coming up..it was.

Sorry about your team issues too..that stinks when so close in a game to perfection.

This year , I know we played our best and it'll just take a bit more to get there just have to do better and that is part of the fun. Thanks for the great Central Valley regional everyone was fantastic. We'll be back next year somewhere in CA

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Whatever you think you're seeing here, you're wrong. There is nothing about the algorithm that weights whether a team has made it to Champs. You're grasping at straws.

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@Boltman Congrats on another great season. 1836 was cheering you on from our shop. You were fantastic alliance partners last year. Hopefully we will see you at OC if you are there come say hi!

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QFT - The algorithm (at least a few years ago) does not include team numbers or any kind of history. It starts with team #1 (attending that regional) and goes through team X (attending that regional). It is randomized a bit but it has nothing do with the FRC team number until it fills in that the nth team to register was team ABCD for the report they feed to pit admin.

With respect you are way out in left field on this topic.

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I may be "in left field" a simple check will either prove a trend or not.

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I would like to note that with small sample sizes it is statistically likely to see patterns that aren't actually there.

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Thanks 1836 we were bummed you were not at CV, I immediately looked for your team. Glad you checked us out ..it was so fun. I most likely will do OC I just need another week to decide.

And best of luck! (Harden your bot and bring every spare part)

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I know that is just one regional, I am not drawing a conclusive statement just what I noticed in two years of actually analyzing stuff. Just presenting limited data in one regional here.

It did not affect us one bit. Neither did losing 2 RP in San Diego. We were good enough to get what we deserved either way.

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Perhaps, anyhow we had a ton of fun playing with all the great teams up in
NoCal. Good luck 254 your bot rocks.

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Sorry, pet peeve of mine. Referees make these calls, not judges.

Did any of the teams ask the referees during the driver meeting if outerwork shots would be protected?

My opinion is this has to be brought up at every drivers meeting in order to keep the rule fresh in the referee's minds.

p.s. thanks for the great updates!

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There is no "perhaps" here. The algorithm does not factor in team numbers or team history. Rather than pontificate here, consider talking with an FTA or reading up on the matchmaking algorithm to understand how it works.

http://www.idleloop.com/matchmaker/

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Thanks for the link! I like having more info.

"it's desirable to minimize duplicates so that teams see as many different teams as possible. It's especially desirable for a given team not to have the same team as a partner more than once, nor as an opponent more than once."

I think they could have split 1678's second match against us to another match just sayin'. Its not really ideal for any team to face consensus #1 twice in qualifications or 20% of their matches.

I'm sure the algorithm tries to be unbiased however as we know it can be imperfect (as the above link states) a human FTA should look for duplicates and adjust as necessary. Just flip teams above or below any "peculiarity" a one game switch in the schedule is doable.

I am not pontificating (you chose to read a post in my week 2 update thread), just pointing out the realities of a single regional's scheduling that happened to have 4 World Champions everyone in FRC knows.

Also I disagree with this statement "This is not only a scheduling algorithm issue, but a simple matter of not knowing in advance which teams will turn out to be more effective than others."

I believe "Class" has a lot to do with year to year success in a 20 year organization of 4000 or so teams... just like in horse racing. So to say that 254 or 1678 or 973 or 1323 are all the sudden not going to be good is a false statement. they will likely be very good because of their programs and their history. They would not accept anything less. Same here we are not going to fall off the face of FRC either every year we will iterate better. You can assume certain things from how teams have done in the past. Just look at their year over year results its all there.

I think to really do scheduling "correctly" some unbiased FTA needs to "adjust" when the computer prints out what it thinks is optimal based on some algorithm. The FTA knows or should know the perennial teams and could easily see the duplicates or inordinate amount of powerhouse pairings with a single highlighter . They could adjust anytime up to when its posted. It can be done and I think it improves the game play as well if instituted correctly.

The main problem is.. teams only get maybe 20 matches in two regionals so scheduling draw is huge just like "missed RP's" as a high order ranking metric.

I'm not afraid to point things out to improve the game hopefully for every team. FRC is great yet can still improve and tweak. Its good to be questioned and not accept always the status quo. I may just have a fresh view on an older institution. Things can always improve.

This is not why we are not in St Louis. All I'm sayin' it could be done better...and perhaps it makes a smidgen of difference if they actually tweak the way schedules are made. Might take a half hour or less at each regional to flip a few teams a few spots with the analytic help.

-----------------------------------------------

Attached is the way I do schedules lets pretend its a different season and in this scenario 3495 is a super powerhouse and consensus #1 or won 4 WC divisions and its our second match with them on our side. Great for us but seemingly "unfair" for having #1 twice on our side (or against us)

I mark partners in green and opponents in red for my scouts. Whites we do not play.

So if an FTA wanted to by switching 5137 for 2135 a one game switch a second powerhouse pairing match is avoided then all they have to do is make sure the other 5 teams did not play that team on same side or not. There are plenty of white spaces to switch teams around IF the goal is to be more random and possibly more fair to all teams.

If that does not work then there are two other "blue" teams that could make the switch.

We could have probably used the extra game in between as well there...in that scenario.

Just like with instant replay, changes can be made that are fairly simple and don't open a can of worms.... what might actually happen is all the sudden more teams get super good alliance partners and avoid facing powerhouses too much until eliminations. Schedules are always pretty late anyhow.

I think a human eye on it could easily sort out inconsistencies, much easier than trying to program some algorithm..its not rocket science. Let the algorithm do the sort.. then highlight several inconsistencies and move things around slightly.

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Thanks for correcting me and you are welcome.

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This proposition is inherently contradictory. You are asking for an "unbiased" volunteer to introduce bias into the schedule based on their perception of historical robot / team quality. No matter how you slice it, that is biasing the results even farther from random than what they are, and there isn't even a chance of a volunteer doing this "fairly".

Changing the algorithm to try and pair teams of different ages with each other was tried once, in 2007, with generally disastrous results. The match making generator is already far from random when you consider all of the constraints on it - adding more constraints to make schedules "fairer" all but requires loosening one of the other constraints. In 2007, this meant matches had a consistent mix of young teams, old teams, and middle aged teams... at the cost of having to play with and against the same robots over and over again. It was almost universally disliked.

My advice? Get over the fact that schedules won't ever be "fair" however you see it, and work on becoming a team that isn't dependent on a perfect schedule to play well into Saturday / Sunday afternoon.

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I will agree 100% with the 2007 system of scheduling being a mess. It was my second year on the team and we ended up being ranked 2nd at UTC with a robot that never hung a tube once (maybe 2) and was complete garbage. We were lucky and got paired up with 25 twice and many other great teams to push up to being ranked 2nd.

I felt guilty ranking so high with such a poor performing robot. I refuse to even count it as our highest ranking ever at an event.

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Congrats to 5137 playing so well during CVR! You were very steady throughout. Interesting how you and 5136 have developed into such strong teams in a short amount of time.

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Thanks we loved it. We were rooting hard for 5136 too.

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Been there done that already as I repeatedly said this did not affect us (but may affect others).... we held our own in CV and Ventura last year both days . I think that small changes could be made though to benefit all teams and saying that's "just the way it is" is not really acceptable.

I foresee maybe about three glaring inconsistencies that may need to be adjusted per "powerhouse" event... an hour of work maybe just making sure it does not mess another team up. The system is decent I believe it can be improved. Just like missed defense crossings that also can improve. Pretty sad when Portcullis crossings are missed especially the way we did them :)

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I agree; I've posted about this earlier. A bit of history: we got the No 1 seed in Curie in 2013 in part because we had a very favorable schedule--play with powerhouses, never against them. In 2015, it was the opposite, but we scrambled through and made ourselves very attractive to 118. Our scheduling bonus was in the initial assignment to Newton when we had already played with 118 in Sac (and we knew 1671 extremely well.)

The solution is in fact quite easy. It's a two-step scheduling algorithm that accounts for last season's performance. I believe that all of the professional sports leagues already do this. First, you sort the teams in bins A, B & C based on a ranking criterion--probably a system akin to the district point system. (Rookies = 0). Each match is scheduled by drawing a team from each bin for each alliance as an added step. All of the other constraints then come into place.

The single biggest problem? FIRST has to explicitly acknowledge that teams are of differing competitive quality. The rationale for the ChampSplit seems to imply that they are unwilling to make this acknowledgement as somehow being demeaning. I believe that it is much more disheartening to face two WC teams in a qualifying round and know that there's little that you can do to slow them down when they are paired because all of your alliancemates are young teams.

And I've been quite disappointed in the announcing prep done for FRC teams. Too often they bring in a "voice" who has little connection to FRC. At Sacramento, I plan to give the announcers much more prep (I'm on the RPC). They can spread out the kudos for teams like 254 over the whole competition so there's not a huge buildup in a single match (but it's also important to generate buzz by acknowledging team accomplishments--watch any elite sporting competition.) And it's also very important to acknowledge what other newer or lower ranked teams have done. Even noting that 5137 had been fighting for No. 1 seed all competition should have been notes.

Again, congrats. Please come to Sac soon!

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Thanks for the world class insights.... SAC how much further is that? LOL, I literally almost fell asleep on the way home...had to pull over to take a 20 minute "not crash car" nap

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As someone who was around the last time the match scheduling algorithm attempted to account for strength of schedule, NO. Just NO. 2007 was AWFUL. Yes, these caps are required.

The gripe is about favorable/unfavorable schedules. If you try to balance out the competitive levels of teams, you're inherently creating favorable/unfavorable schedules. This is exactly what happened in 2007. Older teams had unfavorable schedules, and younger teams had favorable ones. By trying to solve the problem, you're essentially enshrining the problem.

And as a technical point, only the NFL accounts for previous seasons' results in determining the schedule. And that's a relatively minor factor (it influences only 2 games of the 16 on each team's schedule). Conferences/divisions (which are geographically based) are the driving factor in the other 14 games of the NFL schedule, and the lone factor in the NBA, MLB, and NHL schedules.

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NFL teams play each other once unless in divisions (or playoffs)

I do think there is a solution....

NO duplicates
Also too many pairings/facings of "known powerhouse teams" should be schedule avoided until eliminations

Powerhouses don't really need that much help to rank high nor is it good for younger teams to face "near certain doom" twice in a competition hence my no duplicate suggestion

Powerhouse teams will not be left on the bench either they will nearly always be selected regardless. Most other teams not as much.

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Correct. That doesn't change my point. Only 2 of the 16 games on an NFL teams' schedule are based on the previous seasons' results. The other 14 games are based on which division a team plays in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation...rent_fo rmula

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But two games are..perhaps similar to the few match-ups I see as inconsistent?

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I wasn't trying to use the NFL as a model to base our scheduling algorithm off of. I was simply pointing out that the assertion that "all of the professional sports leagues already do this" is factually incorrect. Three of the four major North American professional leagues do not factor in previous performance at all, and the only that does only has two games based off of it.

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We could always follow the European soccer leagues' example and relegate the bottom performers.

/s

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Another important thing to mention here is that this year's volunteer training very heavily emphasized only running the MatchMaker algorithm once and only once. And if you ran it a second time, you had to explain your reasoning on Skype. The reason for this policy is to avoid the exact kinds of bias we're discussing - because randomness is the fairest decider of them all.

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The programmer of the 2007 match algorithm believed the same thing. Whether or not it is correct doesn't matter much to the results of implementing that belief: with fewer than about 60 teams at an event, the number of times a given team plays with or against a specific other team skyrockets. This is exactly what you're trying to avoid, isn't it?

Unless you have an extraordinarily large pool of teams to draw from, "all of the other constraints" conspire to cluster teams into essentially the same groupings over and over again. What problem were you trying to solve again?

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I wonder which setting they are using?

Quality The algorithm allows the user to specify a desired quality. This simply determines the number of schedules that are generated and evaluated in the simulated annealing algorithm, as specified in the list below.

Fair: 100,000
Good: 750,000
Best: 5,000,000

If they are running only one perhaps they should choose "Best"

Re: Real Week 2 update
 

I'm reasonably certain they already run it on "best", having played around with the standalone program and been an official scorekeeper in the past. "Best" mode takes several minutes to run, while "Fair" only takes a few seconds. The schedule generation step in FMS also takes several minutes.

Re: Real Week 2 update
 

First I disagree with the assertion that randomness is the fairest decider, especially when we never get to a full probability distribution which would allow schedules to balance out over a one or even several regionals. Second, these algorithms are in fact not completely random. They have inherent patterns that are difficult to erase.

I believe it would be simple add the bin constraint--I doubt that it would have to be run more than once. The only added step which is quite easy is to assign the teams to the separate bins.

As for leaving scheduling to the judgement calls of the officials, I think that's fraught with danger. For example, how should we have treated 5136 at CVR? They had made it to Einstein in 2014 yet they are only a 3rd year team. I think a transparent algorithm solves the problem the best.

Re: Real Week 2 update
 

No, we're not trying to avoid playing with the same teams repeatedly. We're trying to avoid matches in which one alliance is over strong vs the other simply due to the nature of the composition. We should not have been paired with 254 or 1671 AT ALL at CVR, yet we played with both of them. Excluding such pairings is more imperative than playing with as many teams as possible.

Another option to use a sliding scale of point ratings for each team, and ensure that each alliance has a total that exceeds a minimum value. That would allow for more flexibility in alliance composition. Again an imperative to ensure that every alliance has a minimum level of competence. The flip side of having overly strong alliances is less important if each alliance surpasses a minimum.

I'm interested in what the problem was with the 2007 schedule? What criteria were they using?

BTW, I think it's interesting to see that it's only the NFL that uses strength of schedule. The other leagues have so many games (80+) that each team is able to play each other multiple times. (But I will note that the NBA changed its playoff qualification instead as a means of correcting a regional misbalance in schedule strength.) The NFL season is more akin to FRC with relatively few matches compared to the number of competitors.

Re: Real Week 2 update
 

Thanks Citrus Dad for voicing from the top tier what I witnessed in my two years of analyzing. I think FRC can do better and that would possibly allow a new generation to break through to the necessary experience of a true national World Class competition. I have a feeling that is why its so hard for young teams to break through as captains..usually they get in as second ,third or backup because if multiple powerhouse qual pairings get skewed the randomness skewed its awfully hard to remain #1 in day 2 to have pick of the litter we would have picked 1678 not to discredit 254 or 973 or 1323 and many other worthy teams...just 1678 dominated by never losing and proved they could get 1 ball auto and scale. Plus pretty much un-blockable with arguably the fastest cycle times at CVR.. very close was 254 but no scale so (-2 HG equivalent)

I was happy to see in another regional a 5000# captain did break through not sure if that was powerhouse laced or not though..awesome to see.

All I know is going to worlds our first year is the main reason WHY we are so good now as a young third year team. It made an impression on us we will not forget we did not like the taste of finishing 90th or so there. The world championship experience is something every team should have as I believe it helps young teams to become that next generation. You see what it takes and witness first hand the best. I'm just glad CA offers every year a world class regional experience within driving distance.

Re: Real Week 2 update
 

I think this is a noble goal, but the devil will be in the implementation details. Done poorly, we'll be even worse off then we are today. People old enough will remember the 2007 "Algorithm of Doom", which selected teams from three buckets like you're proposing (although those buckets were populated by team age).

The biggest issue will be correctly populating the buckets - this thread discusses many of the same ideas. You'll also have to account for buckets that aren't of equal size (by whatever metric you choose), especially when the number of teams attending is not a multiple of 3. Would this cause more surrogates to be used, or something else?

Are you proposing using previous year's data, because that runs into trouble with fast team turnover and the potential for powerhouse teams to have down years, only to be paired with other powerhouses more often the following year. Plus, what do you do with rookies? They have no data to rely on yet, and there are always exceptional rookie teams, which would cause the same kind of inconsistency.

If you use current season data, what would you do for early events? You wouldn't have any data available for the early weeks, so you'd have to resort to a randomness-based algorithm again. This approach would only work for District Champs/World Champs, where all teams are already guaranteed to have played already.

Plus, Ed Law made a great point in the other thread I linked:
So overall, I'll concede that random selection isn't perfect, but I'm not totally convinced a team strength based algorithm is better.

Re: Real Week 2 update
 

I think you simply never allow repeats and treat world champions that got there "as captains or strong world class second bots" or those that won say 4 regionals in past 6 years slightly different from the remaining pool. I think you let teams like 5136 slide and remain in the greater non-powerhouse pool.

Those "powerhouse" teams should not be paired as a "dream alliance" in Quals at all and possibly face each other to provide more entertainment than just running up the score against three way younger teams scratching and clawing for the worlds only to likely get slaughtered (and drop 2 RP each )

Lets say an event such as CVR there are SIX teams that meet that criteria (with four wildcards not a stretch) so you put SIX fake teams in the algorithm as placeholders...you then analyze each fake entry if it look fair balance with other fake entries you then replace the real powerhouse teams randomly in...for the others you check other fake team place holders if you see a discrepancy shift a pool team in and make their games placeholders...rinse repeat. Until all six teams are more evenly sorted. Then randomly assign powerhouses to each fake entry.

-OR_

Re-run the algorithm until the fake placeholders look balanced is another way. Then enter the real teams again randomly for each fake placeholder.

Look at CVR.. #1 really took it to #5 in Finals ...no surprise to anyone there and #5 was very strong offensively but younger and not as many creds. I'm fairly certain we would have been a similar story as #2...that is how good #1 was.
It really can be like NE always getting to play Cleveland due to lack of young teams at #1 close but not quite at least in stacked regionals. In SD yes a rookie was #1 and got beat in QF SD only had 1 super class bot 399. Our alliance #8 took them out in 2 games because we were ranked low #19 due to missing RP's for breaches not credited. (Should have been rank 10 or 11 and captain) fine with us worked out not so fine for rookie #1 alliance (although they rightfully earned RAS)


Would treating powerhouses slightly different change the end result?
Who knows but it may have. Same with valid RP sorts.

FRC can do better IMO..lots of brains there figure it out.

You are never going to get truly random but you can try to get more balanced at the top tier dream team pairings and facing repeat low win probability having to face the same powerhouse team that beat you more than once especially when paired with another.

Re: Real Week 2 update
 

I've thought about many of these issues, the first is that it has to rely on past year data, not current so Ed's concern is not relevant. (The one exception might be for the Champs, but then teams can't get there by sandbagging.)

I want to take this conversation off line for those interested in addressing this. I have an idea for changing the scheduling process that would both incorporate strength factors AND make it easier. I'm particularly interested in what happened in 2007 as that was before my involvement. Please message me directly if you want to discuss this.

Re: Real Week 2 update
 

I wouldn't say that that's true at all. Just off the top of my head, 1266, 2486, 2102, 3255, and, though I may be biased, 2485 have all been to champs on multiple occasions.

Broader, though, it's not FIRST's job to make sure everyone gets to go to champs. The tech world that FRC prepares us for is cutthroat. Not everyone gets equal opportunity.

Re: Real Week 2 update
 

Those are REALLY good perennial teams I agree but I put 399 above then based on their long consistent history. Starting to approach other CA giants.

Congrats to 2102, 3021 and 2486 for winning SD I'll be watching you in worlds 2485 made it too with a well deserved award. 5805 was super sleek awesome RAS. 2687 got the WC...awesome job San Diego teams. 3255 was very solid until they broke down at the wrong time they should be a favorite in their next event

Actually I'm glad Champs are hard makes you hungry every year.....