Divisions posted
 

They are being posted right now:
https://my.usfirst.org/myarea/index....9&sort=teamnum

Re: Divisions posted
 

I think Dave saw the prediction thread so he decided to use a completely different order :yikes:

Re: Divisions posted
 

I wouldn't bet against it.

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Is it a snaking sort?

(364 and 365 are both in Newton.)

I'd check... but no time.

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woot

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Why does Galileo have to have sooooo many good teams?

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217 and 67 have been seperated. Thank Goodness *lets out huge breath of air*

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It's either random or else is based on something other than team number. No discernable rhyme or reason that I can see based on the sortable columns on the FIRST site.

You're right, Galileo has a disproportionate amount of low numbers...

Re: Divisions posted
 

awww dang. I was hoping for another HOT Wings alliance...Oh well Galileo looks pretty insane

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ahh Archimedes has sooo many good teams !

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Galileo is stacked again this year!
cant wait to get there:)

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Woot! Medes FTW!!!

And who would have thought they would have sorted it like that!

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Hmm Pittsburgh vs. GTR in Archimedes.....

I'm looking forward....to TBA updating their site so we can see the regional win breakdown per division (or for someone to post it earlier ;)) .

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A whopping 87 teams in each division!
Wow! :ahh:

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That's a lot of teams for us to scout!

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Archimedes looks very canadian

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Galileo = Redonculous :ahh:

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That was one of my first thoughts too. I could easily see an all-Canadian alliance taking the divisional banner.

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Actually I was thinking more of a Floridian alliance ;-)

Re: Divisions posted
 

I think you mean an alliance composed of a Michigan, a Florida, and a Canadian team ;)

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Yay!

Re: Divisions posted
 

Here are my predictions for two members of each winning alliance, and one of each finalist:

Archimedes: 1114/2056 over 624
Curie: 217/254 over 79
Galileo: 67/71 over 45
Newton: 234/1625 over 148

Re: Divisions posted
 

Woo, time to make a very distant and probably completely inaccurate prediction! Einstein alliances!

Archimedes: 1114 & 2056
Curie: 217 & 68
Galileo: 71 & 67
Newton: 1625 & 121

Galileo vs. Newton determine the champ (leaning towards Galileo)

Re: Divisions posted
 

I would say 67/71 and BACOONNN!! 1902

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I counted 40 wins (!) for Curie.

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Would that be called "HOT Hammond Bacon"??

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Sign me up for that!!!

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or Beastly Hot Bacon.....lol

Re: Divisions posted
 

Whoever gets out of Galileo isn't going to have an easy time with it. I have a feeling there will be a lot of "breaking up" of good alliances to level the playing field in the division, but it will ultimately hurt the alliance when they get to Einstein.

Curie 2007 was a prime example of this. 330 and 1114 could have gotten together and left Einstein in ruins. However, a team ranked above 330 and kept that alliance from forming. 330 ultimately won the division, but were defeated on Einstein in two matches.

In any case, there are enough very strong teams where they can still defeat the Newton alliance champions on Einstein. Newton isn't nearly as deep as Galileo, but they still carry a lot of weight with 234, 1625, and 148, to name a few. If the right teams rank in the right spots, Galileo may have their second championship in two years.

Losing only one match during the entire Michigan State Championship is incredibly impressive. 217 will probably take the Curie title, and go on to play Galileo in the finals. Who wins from there is all up to whether the right teams rank in the right spots in their respective divisions. I'm going to say Galileo has the favor.

Archimedes has a chance in the semi-finals if things don't go as planned in Curie. Yeah, they have 1114 and 2056. When together, these teams have won every regional.

However, this game is prone to upsets, so who knows exactly what we'll see?

Re: Divisions posted
 

Anyone else think that ALL of the divisions are stacked this year? Atlanta is going to be pretty crazy, I think. We'll be watching the webcasts intensely this year.

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how were the divisions chosen this year ?
it seemed so random

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I completely agree! I'm sad I can't go, but you bet I'll spend three entire days glued to the webcasts with my friends, while other people wonder what is wrong with us. :D

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I think so, whatever method they used for sorting teams looks pretty random and pretty level.

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You know your division is stacked when every time you look at it, you recognize another powerhouse team you didn't notice before. Yeesh, Galileo here we come :]

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http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k...Ogz4x5Yw&gid=1 is a graph of Teams v Division (Divisions correspond to Archimedes = 1 and proceed alphabetically) I can give anyone access to the google doc used to create this graph or you can copy it and create your own in about the same amount of time anyway.

I cannot see any pattern that jumps out. The possibility of doing a completely random distribution would seem foolish because it could mean that all the low teams end up in one division and the higher teams end up in another. Does this mean FIRST wouldnt do it? Heavens no.

I will continue to look at some numbers, I have a few hunches but I am betting they are fruitless.

Kudos to anyone who can break the formula before Championship :D

Re: Divisions posted
 

The order doesn't seem to have anything obvious to do with team number, location, team name, or order of registration (yes, I checked by looking at the divisions of the last few teams that were added to the list this morning and yesterday ;) ).

So it's either random, or generated by some suitably complex but deterministic function from whose obfuscated nature Dave is undoubtedly gleaning pleasure. :]

Re: Divisions posted
 

Tough divisions. A lot of good teams, tons of strategies...

Should be an amazing competition. Don't count any team out though...we all know how easy it is to get into trouble with this game.

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It must be a game hint!:P

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It almost seems as if they just randomized the list and went ran the Serpentine algorithm on the random list, or something of that nature. I don't see any readily noticable pattern emerging from this.

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Are any regional winners in same division or did they break them up?

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According to this post, the Pittsburgh winners are together (222, 1218, 1743) in Archimedes.

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Divisions are up on TBA. 87 teams per division. Team sig banners will regenerate within 24 hours.

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If it's not too much trouble, could TBA display the number of wins for each division like it did for the predictions. That would be awesome.

Re: Divisions posted
 

For what it's worth, the distribution of team numbers looks like FIRST made an effort to spread them out pretty fairly:

Archimedes Curie Galileo Newton
Median team number 1302 1108 1124 1138
Mean team number 1341 1267 1192 1229

Re: Divisions posted
 

To me it looks like what you would get if you shuffled 4 decks (or suites) of 87 cards into each other once. It is not even close to purely random, the team numbers clump together far too much (Curie has 6 teams in a row from 236-271). It would be simple to implement, just make a program that makes 4 lists and inserts a specified number of "cuts" (to another list). Then take the resulting order (single list) of divisions and apply it to number ordered list of teams.

Re: Divisions posted
 

How about update your predictions site to show the real divisions and do the color scheme?

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Archimedes for us. At least 254 or 399 aren't in there to terrorize us, lol. Sure, we could've possibly gotten teamed up, but we usually aren't too lucky, haha. Now the powerhouses in our division will be mysteries.

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You can't forget 1114 or 2056 :P

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Who are they? I've never heard of these teams :p

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So I was wondering ... why 87 teams per division? Does that number seem a bit odd to anyone else?

88 seems like such a nice, even number :confused:

After doing a bit of cypherin' I think I may have figured it out ...

To entirely avoid the need for surrogate matches there would need to be either 84 teams per division, or 90 teams per division. I suppose that for any number of reasons 84 may be too few (only 336 total) and 90 too many (a WHOPPING 360 FRC teams total)? :cool:

Within that range, 87 teams gives the most options to avoid surrogates. Any even number of "rounds" (8, 10 or 12) would yield that same number of plays for each team, while any odd number of rounds would require some teams to play as surrogates for their 3rd "Q" match. Any other number of teams/divison between 84 and 90 would require either 9 or 12 "rounds" to avoid anyone having to play as a surrogate. (I know 6, 14, and 15 fit in there somewhere, but I am staying within a "reasonable" range of matches - not likely to be less than 8 or more than 12 per team)

Am I making any sense??

Anyone have any other thoughts ??

Does anyone really CARE ?? :ahh:

Re: Divisions posted
 

Hmmmm, just some randoms that pwn ;)

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They signed up all the teams that had to be signed up, then let in a couple to round it out to a number divisible by 4 and that's why there are 87 teams in each division.

Re: Divisions posted
 

Stu, I'm sure we all care...

Most likely, there will be 102 qualification matches played in each division. Each team will play 7 matches that count and three teams in each division will play a surrogate match. So for those teams who end up with 8 matches, remember that your third match will not count in the standings (but that doesn't mean the scouts will ignore you!!)

Re: Divisions posted
 

what do you guys mean by "surrogate match?"

Re: Divisions posted
 

It basically means that you have to play an extra match that WON'T count so that everyone else can get in 7 games. But don't blow it off, we will definitely be watching ;)

Re: Divisions posted
 

Not disputing ... but why do you think 7 rounds (102 matches)? Sticking to 6 minute cycle times that would be just over 10 hours of playing time (then divisional elims, then Einstein).

Bumping up to 8 rounds eliminates surrogates and brings the total matches to 116, adding about an hour and a half ... Is that too long?

Re: Divisions posted
 

Every championship since at least 2004 has had exactly seven qualification rounds.

http://www2.usfirst.org/2004comp/eve.../rankings.html
http://www2.usfirst.org/2005comp/eve.../rankings.html
http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/eve.../rankings.html
http://www2.usfirst.org/2007comp/eve.../rankings.html
http://www2.usfirst.org/2008comp/eve.../rankings.html

Re: Divisions posted
 

i guess it is because we generally only have 7 rounds every year.

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I really wish we could play 8 matches instead of 7, too.

The agenda allows just under 10-1/2 hours of playing time for FRC, so 7 is probably going to be the deal.:(

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it usually is seven. and i wouldn't be surprised if it stayed the same. looing at all the field problems and the fact that fields tend to fall 10-15 minutes behind at championships.

i've usually paid attention to maybe 2 fields each year i've been to championships (07' Gali and Curie, 08' Newton and Gali)... looks like this year that's going to change, seeing that all four fields are much more balanced than in years past. Einstein will be amazing

Re: Divisions posted
 

I care Stu ... I care. ;)

I think they went with the closest even (divisible by 4) to the number of qualifiers they had. I think they will run 7 matches like usual and just deal with the surrogates. Anything makes more sense than last year where they had 340 teams (should be 85 teams/division). They put 84 teams in Curie and 86 teams in Galileo :confused: (like Galileo needed another team :rolleyes: it was already stacked). I know they saved 1 overall match (no surrogates in Curie) but matches run in parallel, and if you are going to do that why not with the other 2 divisions as well?

Re: Divisions posted
 

Why only predict number one seeds? How about trying to predict the entire tournament...

Archimedes
1. 2056, 1114, 1334
2. 39, 222, 1421
3. 503, 201, 548
4. 665, 1649, 2753
5. 624, 488, 1503
6. 48, 2846, 1218
7. 61, 868, 1712
8. 180, 931, 118

Curie
1. 217, 188, 27
2. 254, 245, 2834
3. 79, 68, 2815
4. 1771, 399, 70
5. 1806, 175, 247
6. 395, 375, 2826
7. 1165, 1675, 1
8. 1024, 190, 904
Galileo
1. 67, 71, 1646
2. 45, 987, 1902
3. 111, 1717, 418
4. 1250, 744, 2775
5. 40, 25, 20
6. 179, 56, 1923
7. 359, 65, 1332
8. 1208, 494, 1742
Newton
1. 1625, 234, 233
2. 148, 135, 1511
3. 126, 1155, 86
4. 365, 121, 1732
5. 1918, 469, 2970
6. 85, 1701, 1714
7. 1086, 88, 1726
8. 1038, 368, 832

I am not sure who plays who on Einstein this year, but this is the order I think is the strongest to weakest alliance. Yep, I'm calling the championship to be won by 3 Canadian teams this year.

Archimedes
1. 2056, 1114, 1334

Newton
1. 1625, 234, 233

Curie
1. 217, 188, 27

Galileo
2. 45, 987, 1902

Re: Divisions posted
 

This brings up a question that was asked about the Michigan Championship - do we need a full practice day? Couldn't 3 or 4 hours of qualification matches be played on Thursday afternoon?

Re: Divisions posted
 

Thanks Dave
Thanks guys ... well ... DUH !!

You would think an experienced head ref would know better ... :o
Fact is that after build season I pay much less attention to the logistics of the competitions than to my responsibilities as a referee.

My team competed at two regionals this year and due to reffing obligations I was only with them for one day total. After a Finalist trophy in Cleveland (while I was in Chicago) I think they might prefer it that way :rolleyes:

That is certainly an interesting idea Gary. By the time a team reaches Atlanta it is not unreasonable to think they could get by with less practice time.

Re: Divisions posted
 

just out of curiosity, what did you base the predictions on? CCWM, OPR, watching matches?