POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

It seems to me, that by developing software for a palm-pilot or other portable computing device... you could increase the efficiency of your coach tenfold. He/she would have to look away from the field less, the score computation would be more accurate than any human could be, and It could even tell you the next best move. My thoughts are that if paper and pencil were superior to calculators, we would not have phased them out for most advanced math.


What will your team be doing, and why?

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I think having a scoring program would be nice. Depending on how it was made, it would be a very effective way of calculating score. I am making a scoring program on my TI-84 Calculator in TI-Basic, but the calculator's processor is too slow to calculate the score in a reasonable amount of time. However, having a palm w/ a scoring program on it would be good, unless FIRST has a reliable scoring program that they use to display the score during the matches.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

how would you communicate to the rest of your alliance?

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

Same way you would with a pen and paper.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

to quote a great man...

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

Iwill second that quote Jay, he was a great man.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I assume we're discussing the coach behind the drive team? Are they allowed to bring paper or palm pilots?

Even a clipboard, much less a palm pilot, doesn't qualify as "OPERATOR CONSOLE, reasonable decorative items, and special clothing and/or equipment required due to a disability", or am I mistaken here? :confused:

Don

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I don't think it would be that useful during the match, I might make something up to draw out pre match strategy.

This was resolved in update 3

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

Why would the coach look away less?
If anything they'll look away more, inputting information. If the coach has no strategy aid then they don't have to look away, ever.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

Thanks Jay

2:15 is not enough time to input scoring into a laptop. They will have (at least) 2 people in charge of real time scoring. How can one person input the score and tell the drivers what to do next?

"Coach where do we score next?"
"....umm my windows/mac/linux/palm device crashed."

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I dont really see why you would need to know the current score, just by looking you can estimate. Also you always want to break up the biggest rows of the other team and extend your biggest. There really isn't a need for the white board, you are standing close enough to see every thing.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

The coach would have to look away less for a palm device than for the paper/pencil route. Lets face it... Scoring in this years game is not going to be very fast paced, to pick up a tube, go to the proper place on the rack, and score the tube, you will take *at very least* 15 seconds. With the coach having to look away for maybe 2 seconds, not much will happen when they do. The machine would obviously be more accurate at tabulating score than a human, and that will be very important to this years game. With all of the rows/columns, any human, even a "real coach", who is supposed to be counting rows and columns will miss things that will lose their team the match.

Think of it simply:
All that guy with palm-pilot has to do is tell the computer where the tubes are being placed, the computer does ALL the tabulating. The coach then relays the information to the drivers.

Guy with paper has to mark down tube locations, try to identify all rows and columns, count the number of tubes in each row and column, and multiply in their head to find the score. At the same time he has to try to predict the highest possible scoring next move. Once he *thinks* he has the correct move, he has to relay it to the drivers.

Guy will no scoring aid has to do EVERYTHING in his own head.



EDIT: The chances of a palm OS crash while running as simple a program as this are about the same as the coach having a seizure in the middle of the match.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

James your gonna make a good coach someday.

KISS Method

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

People are not always right. Estimating may work in some cases but no one is perfect, the score could be so close, and it may look like you are winning, but in real life you are loosing but just a few points. Last year the real time scoring was really nice because you new what the out come was most likely going to be. Yes it was wrong alot of the times but it was nice to have. Having a program to see what the score exactly is without penalties, would be very nice to have. Sure you have to keep an eye on the game at all times, but it is nice, not having to crunch numbers through your head. And while crunching the numbers you could mess up, because of something exiting that might happen on the field.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

That's the point. You DON'T crunch numbers. Make big rows. Break up your opponents. Place spoilers in the middle of blocks if you're opponent makes them. Simplicity FTW!

EDIT: If people played without PDA's back when FIRST had this addiction to nigh-impossible-to-calculate-in-your-head multipliers, then we can play without PDA's now.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

This is true, they did not have them back then, I'm just saying that it would be a helpful tool. You don't need to have it , but it would be one of those nice things to have.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

wheres the not gonna use anything option


EDIT: Call me old fashioned, but a coach should be able to make a viable strategy decision on the fly at any point during the match. ALSO, your coach isn't going to be jsut focusing on the rack (although most of the focus will be here). You need to be aware of where all the robots on the field are at the same time, what they're doing, how quickly they're doing it. EVEN IF i thought using a palm/laptop/whatever were effective, it is only concentrating on 1 portion of the game. YOU DO NOT NEED TO KNOW THE SCORE, you just need to know how to increase your score and decrease theirs which is fairly simple, if you see a row of 6, put a spoiler on either the 3rd or 4th spider leg to make it a row of 2 and a row of 3.

As said earlier, back in the day, which was a wednesday by the way, the multipliers were ridiculous (in 2001 it relied on how much time it took your alliance to "get satisfied" with their round). Coaches did not need a palm pilot to tell them the exact score. They just knew they needed to put balls in goal, put bigger balls on a goal, get both those goals balanced on the platform, and get the bots back in the home zone AS QUICK AS POSSIBLE.

I think your coach should be able to observe the situation and know what to do without too much effort based on pure common sense combinded with a little logic. Thats how i'll be rollin this year.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I guess it fits in with the "I don't know" option, but I forgot to add it.


EDIT:
Using a palm pilot doesn't automatically make your coach have 60 less I.Q. points, he will still be able to do the same things he would without it, it is just a useful tool; like a calculator, or the cotton gin.


Your coach will be able to better make a strategy decision when he is properly informed. He will be more completely informed with a palm pilot, or other such score-keeping device. On our team, the coach doesn't drive the robot, and the drivers aren't automatons doing only what they are told while on the field. The coach will tell what the best strategy is, and the drivers will decide how to get it done, because it is their job to drive the robot; not the coach's.
Since all the palm pilot will be is a tool, it will improve efficiency. "put it where you think it should go" is fine and dandy, but I'd hate to be the coach when you lose the match by 2 points because you missed something.


Frankly, I find this blatant rejection of technology to be disturbing on a forum like ChiefDelphi, whose sole purpose is to promote it. A hammer is a hammer, and nobody refuses to use it because : "Real carpenters don't use hammers when building things."

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I wouldn't go as far as to say that a palm will be completely accurate because of the difficulty in seeing the other side and input errors but I agree with you.

I honestly believe KISS is overrated. Computer hardware, software, cars, cellphones, mp3 players, HDTVs are just a few examples of how everything far more complex than it was even a few years ago. Why is FIRST pushing so many sensors on us? They want us to develop more complex software with more advanced controls and PID algorithms.

At the very least, the KISS formula has to rewritten every year to keep up with the pace.

I am not saying you should completely dump simplicity but rather you shouldn't dump form and function for simplicity, most of the time.

The fact is simplicity has limitations but complexity doesn't. In general, a simple robot more limited than a complex one. Why do people want more options in everything(cars, computers, CELLPHONES)?

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

There's so much more to being a good coach than keeping track of score. The coach needs to be aware of what all 6 robots on the field are doing at all times. Each time the coach looks down to input, s/he instantly loses track of what's happening on the field. This isn't a sacrifice that I'd be willing to make. The time spent inputting, is time that isn't spent communicating with the drivers. As a coach, you want your full attention on the entire field. You just can't do that if you're inputting into a handheld.

Sure it'd be handy to know the exact score at any given moment, but it definitely isn't necessary. By examining the state of the rack, a good coach should be able to determine the optimal move quite quickly. This is something that should be practiced extensively before competition. Once this skill is perfected, there should be no need for a palm pilot in the box.

If we were back in the day of two coaches, having the second coach dedicated to scoring and using the palm, might be something that I would consider. But for Rack 'N' Roll, I just see the input time being a bottleneck and a distraction. Especially in matches where you have 4+ competent scorers.

I'll take watching a full match and my own calculations over being distracted and using the palm any day. This is from someone who coached in 1998, when the formula for scoring was x(2^y).

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I might be coaching for our team this year. Some of our guys are currently writing a program to keep track of score and suggest the bester scoring and spoiling locations. Depending on the availability of a tablet-pc or a pal-pilot, we might or might not use it. I feel confident enough that I can do my job with or without it. If it ends up helping me, good for us. If not, oh well.

-Guy

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

With any luck I will be operating for 229 once again, and if our coach says that he MUST have a scoring aid in order to be successful, I will petition for a new coach, as simple as that.

I'm not attacking anyone who believes they need a PDA in the booth, but I really see no need for a coach to use scoring aids, period.

It really is that simple...

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

This is true. If anyone can think of a more optimal strategy, I'd like to hear it.

Breaking your opponent's rows will ALWAYS reduce their score maximally, and increasing your longest will ALWAYS increase your score maximally.

There are other considerations, like "can we get to the back of the rack to score quickly enough?", but those aren't going to be helped by a palmpilot, they're going to be helped by getting a feel for your alliance and your opponents, and telling if going around will be worth it. If you choose not to go around, then the strategy becomes "Break your opponent's longest row on your side, and extend your longest rows on your side".

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

First off, people don't say that because real carpenters DO use hammers when building things.

Next, why are they pushing all the sensors on us? You said that it's because they want us to make more complicated robots. Not true! All of the sensors are just options to be put on your robot. If you think you need them, then add them, if not, don't.

Now, on to the KISS principle. YES IT IS THAT SIMPLE! Make your rows big and plentiful, make the opponents small and few! Guarenteed to work every time if done properly!

As for a scoring aid, I don't think that we'll be using one this year. I am, however, making a "game" that flashes up a representation of the rack partially filled and the player has to choose the best place to score within a set time limit. I came up with the idea as a training aid. (I got the idea from those flash memory games that flash a number and some symbols and you have to write them down within a time limit)

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I think that this is only if it is connected to the operator interface. If it is a stand alone tool I believe it is still allowed.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

Look in team update #3


If you are referring to me saying the things with the last section of your post, you are wrong. I did not say any of that. 6600gt did say that, and while I respect his opinions, he is not me. I am not "pushing sensors" on anyone, and neither was he. It is a simple fact that a well implimented sensor system will be necessary for a consistant auto mode this year. The GDC made surt of that. If you don't want to use them, then don't. You will not have as successful of an auto mode as someone who does.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

What this argument comes down to is what do you want the coach to do? Do you want your coach to strictly focus on the rack?? I think this is leaving your team very exposed. That program can have the simplest interface imaginable, but you still are goign to need to take your eyes off the field and change tubes around or what have you.

Obviously people here have their opinions and I honestly do not think that PDAs/palms/whatever are bad...I am not "refusing technology". Technology at times can be distracting. Youve heard it since first grade, your brain is the most powerful computer you can have. I would like to see how your palm works out. However I feel the most effective coaches are the ones that are able to understand the game enough, and evaluate the situations quickly enough to make split second decisions at any point in the match.

Coaching involves ALOT of observation. Your looking at your bot, your teammates, your opponents, the rack, the clock, possible penalties, what the human players are doing, where tubes are located on the field. Honestly the palm pilot or what have you is only concentrating on the rack, nothing more.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

When it comes to tabulating score, you shouldn't need paper or any mechanism to do the scoring for you. Maybe it's my three years of being drilled into the skill of counting, adding, subtracting, and multiplying in binary that leads me to think that but the logic isn't all that hard.

The first meeting my team had after kick off, while we were waiting for our second school to show up, I took it upon my self to diagram out the rack (flat) to try and calculate a perfect score. They didn't arrive until a short time after I had completed it, but the first words out of their mouthes...were "that looks like binary".

And don't we have to put our team numbers on the controller in binary anyway? I know that if you were to give me a team number, within a few seconds I could tell you the value for each bit for that number (within a reasonable amount of time of course). So maybe it's a useful skill this year for students/drive team*especially*/coaches to learn binary so they can easily calculate the score in their head. The hardest part would be accounting for where game pieces are nullified because of a spoiler or which ever other way they can be, because you may not be able to see them. But when you think about it, all it is is binary.

<goes slightly off topic...but I feel it needs to be said>

I think last year spoiled us with the "real time scoring", yes it makes it seem more like a real sport, but FIRST isn't like any other sport out there. FIRST is about getting kids excited about technology and wanting to go into a field where they can use their minds in a productive way. What's the big deal about knowing who is ahead in points? Why does it seem that the most important aspect is who is winning or who is going to win? Winning will get you some glory, but that's just about it. An employer isn't going to care whether or not your team won a FIRST competition, but they're gonna care that you're in career track that you're in and that you can be the best that you can be, and if its FIRST that caused that, then more power to FIRST.

<returning back to topic...>

I know my team will not be using any electronic devices besides the controller (duh), nor do I think they will bring anything up there to help assist in calculating score.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I am creating a program in C++ for a PSP with a windows operating system emulator.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I'm willing to bet that FIRST will have some form of "real time" scoring to display on the screen, similar to 2005, that can typically provide an adequate estimate. That being said, a coach shouldn't rely on it, nor should a coach have to.
The scoring is simple enough, and it will usually be fairly obvious who has a lead. In this game, there are really only 11 scores of the rack a coach should be worried about.
Leading by > 60
Leading by > 45
Leading by > 30
Leading by > 15
Leading by < 15
Tied
Trailing by < 15
Trailing by > 15
Trailing by > 30
Trailing by > 45
Trailing by > 60
Many of these situations may also be null depending on both your and your opponents alliance structure in any particular match.
Beyond that, a coach should be looking for opportunities to extend rows, block rows, and create new rows, place spoilers, on the rack, not worrying about the exact score. A coach MUST be aware of the positions and actions of all 6 robots on the field, time, and game pieces.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I am very interested to see what designs for paper or whiteboard there will be. I think the flat box can be confusing because it does not show the wrap around nor does it show quickly which number is on which side of the field. I would imagine a staggered box pattern to make it look more 3d. If anyone has designed out their designs they'll be using as coaches, please upload them.

And for those making programs for palms... I have a PalmOne Zire 3.1. I think this program would be cool to have even if not used as a coach.

I do not know if I will be a coach this year, I'll be happy to hand the duty over if the students choose to have a student take the position this year. I believe I would mostly go with intuition as opposed to number crunching. Where else would you place a spoiler than on a large row or at the intersection two rows that form a T or cross. That being said, I do not even plan on using spoilers.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I don't know if I will be a on-field coach this year, but if I am I will not be using any scoreing aid.

The reason is because I don't believe the coach needs one, nor do I believe it's the coaches job to be a scorekeeper. I believe that the coach should be assessing the capabilities of the robots on the field (both allied and opposing) as well as assessing the strategy being used by the opponents.

There will be a myrid of strategies used in this game (and in this thread I have not seen my teams strategy :cool: ), and each will have to be assessed quickly and play modified to adapt to those strategies. That is the job of the coach, IMHO.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I'd condense that down to nine, really. Especially given the way singletons and smaller rows factor into this year's game, I doubt that many will be able to differentiate a ten-point gap either way. And, when I think about it, it doesn't really matter at that point--it's obvious that you need to take some action to widen the gap, either by scoring or spoiling.

And no, I don't anticipate anybody on 1618 using a scoring aid for the simple reason that good data is hard to collect, especially in a fast-paced match.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

I think that taking the time to imput in all the tubes take too long. Simply going with intuition you should be able to make sound judgements. I would still want to test a scoring aid, but I don't think that I want to take the time away from watching our robot, our alliance, the opposing 3 robots, the rack, the locations of spoilers and ringers on the ground, the remaining time...

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

Your coach just needs to have an idea to what you want to do before the match, if you take time to actually write/type/mark anything, you will have to take your eyes off the field and thats time wasted that you could be scoring. Ken always tells us that its the coaches job to know what should happen next because hes the drivers/operators "eyes" for the rest of the field (He likes to tell us what to do :) ). If you can find a quick way of doing it then more power to you, but i think you should just practice all the different ways of scoring and whats needed in each situation.

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

As arguments against using a scoring aid go, I'm fully comfortable with the "coaches should be watching the whole field and not spending time punching figures into a program" line of reasoning. I know a number of excellent coaches who all subscribe to this philosophy, and it makes the most sense to me, for what that's worth.

What I'm not comfortable with is when we start to speak categorically. My feeling is that over the course of the season, a good coach watching the entire situation in every match will win more matches than a good coach tabulating score and making decisions based on that in every match.

Following from this, I think that the best coach is a composite, provided perfect information prior to each match on which coaching method is going to end up being optimal. The assumption I make in this assessment is, of course, that there ARE matches where a loss can be turned into a win by switching from pure field watching to a watching/tabulating combination, so I suppose I have to support that.

Where I think knowing the exact score and optimal next move is important is in the last 20 or 30 seconds of the match, when alliances are going to start to think about their call backs for end-of-match elevation. Implicit in this strategic consideration is an issue with the placement and timing of your last ringer/spoiler. I doubt that even a very good coach can consistently know the exact score well enough to determine the risk/reward tradeoffs with regard to time remaining. For example: do we need to leave our best hanger out in the middle of the field for 5 seconds longer than the safest call back time, given the endgame capabilities of our alliance and our opponents and the score? What is the downside risk associated with this decision? Is there a less risky way to assure victory in the match (e.g. do we need to get a spoiler on the side, or just another ringer right in front of us before getting back)?

There is no reason why a very good coach without an aid can not make a winning decision in these types of situations every time they come up over the season, given the limited number of matches. I highly doubt that this coach can perform on the fly the calculations necessary to come to an optimal solution as many times out of 100 as can a computer program with the right degree of sophistication. This theoretically reduces the aid-less coach's winning percentage over the long run.

On the other side of the coin, I think we can all agree that there are match situations where looking down at a screen can cause a coach to miss things vital to success, so I'm not going to spend any time on that.

Another thing to consider is that one of my assumptions is a "good" coach. As the quality of a coach diminishes, I think we eventually reach a point where that person would be better off using a program to determine the next best move to tell the drivers while completely ignoring ''big picture'' situation. My gut feeling is that if we could graph it out, that point would come much earlier along the coach quality decline curve than we would think. To use an example from this thread, Karthik: I know you're confident that your coach will be able to consitently make the best or at least a satisficing decision to win. I wonder: without Derek (assuming you can't fill in), how confident would you feel?

(Forgive me a small digression, but sometimes I wish that coaches would switch teams more often so that we could more accurately determine the impact of above or below average coaching on bottom line win totals. I'm thinking about baseball, where many analysts have determined that a "good" manager probably adds around 3 to 6 wins per year by strategy alone - not counting player development and management - which seems like an awfully low number when we consider the popular image of the manager as genius. In football it seems like the right head coach can turn a team around completely, and I suspect that this is true, because football, being an emotional game, requires more ''inspiration'' from the coach, and because there are so many more strategic options than in baseball. I suspect that coaching in FIRST would fall somewhere between those two sports, but evaluation suffers from the same pitfalls as in sports, in which coaches and managers with good players look good, and the ones with bad players look like idiots. This pitfall is clear when we think about the best, big name coaches in FIRST: they're all from teams who build great robots.)

All this being said, my conclusion is the same as many others, that a good coach is likely better served by watching the field than by spending any time inputting data, with the qualifier that a mediocre coach might want to investigate his or her computer based options. As for me (scouting and strategy from the stands), I would consider tracking these real time statistics so that I can evaluate our match strategy and report it to the drivers and coach afterwards, but I'm reasonably certain that I won't be using one either. After all, you can probably tell I'm into objectivity, but if we can't rely on experience and the human mind from time to time, then we're in trouble, aren't we?

Re: POLL: Will you be using a scoring aid?
 

Hey, we've got 3 coaches out there, right? And 3 human players with not that all much to do this year. How long does it take to scoop up a tube and push it through the chute, or toss it over the wall?

So, one of the coaches could run the laptop/palm. The HP from that team would take over the coaching of that robot. All 3 coaches (other two from the alliance and the upgraded HP) would take suggestions from the coach with the device. "We need a stopper on 7 Bottom." "Try to score 3 Top." "The only way we can win now is if we get 60 bonus points."

Let's make these real alliances - choose one of the coaches to do something a bit differently this year.

What this means is, if you're developing a coach scoring aid, you also need to develop a HP/coach student.