Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

Now, it seems every year we have a debate about what is the hardest regional. Billfred proposed that we use the BBQ or the SAUCE methods. As you can guess generating the data by hand is tedious so through the wonders of SQLite and Python I generated the BBQ for every regional. I modified the definition of BBQ slightly though, it is all of the awards that give blue banners that a team has won since 2006 (4 years ago).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrew_...83693/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrew_...42062/sizes/l/ (Warning, obscenely LONG)
Here the data is as .png images. I have the PDF files available on demand and will gladly provide the SQLite database in either its native format or as a CSV file.

Now, this is just in the interest of fun. As we all know, past success does not assure future results. Generally it is a good indicator but anything can happen. Enjoy.

EDIT: Just to be clear, this is from FIRST's data. If it is wrong I can't do much about it. Plus, realistically being off by an award or two will only mildly affect the overall results. I will rerun these numbers later so we have it updated more (unless registration is done.)

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

Thanks for running the data, I love this kind of stuff. :)

Something I might run later; The top level BBQ (i.e. total number of banners among the top 24 teams). Would that matter more than the average number of banners across all teams?

I know you said there may be little errors... but the regionals I checked had a lot. Minnesota 10,000 Lakes has 2470 listed as earning two blue banners when they've only ever won one award (though if that's a prediction for 2010 I'd say it's a pretty good bet). 1714 has 3, not 2; 2194 has 2, 2826 has 1, 2177 has none (two regional finalists though). It appears you're counting Regional Finalist, though even including that it still doesn't explain 2194 / 2470 / 2826. (nothing against these teams, I'd prefer to see them all with more blue banners)

Perhaps your script is grabbing the wrong awards? I dunno. For the record I used the FIRST event pages to get all of the data I cited above.



As for my opinion on the hardest regionals: Midwest.

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

There are errors and missing data in the Event Pages as well as on the individual team pages. I just finished going through all of them last week.
There's a lot of what appears to be human data entry errors.
You pretty much have to cross-correlate the data to get an accurate accounting. I've found teams winning at events they didn't attend, and a team that won twice on the same day/event due to a double entry.

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

Interesting, guess my query had a bug in it, data is there just didn't show up in that query. I'll play with it later today. Regional Finalist gives a blue banner in as far as I can recall. If someone has a definitive list of what gives a blue banner I would appreciate it, I did the best I could from memory but I make mistakes.

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

Banners are for Champions & Chairman's only.

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

Cool, for some reason I kept thinking EI and Finalist too. I'll rerun these numbers ASAP.

Edit: Attached the new PDFs (I forgot you could attach PDF files) I spot checked these for some teams.

Mark, as for errors in the FRC Data, it is all I have for now.

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

AZ BBQ just went up...987 (with 7 banners, not 6 as shown btw) switched from UT (which needs to be adjusted down considerably now) and LVR adjusted up by one more banner if you get a chance Andrew. Great work btw!

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

Wow!
I would never have guessed that LVR's BBQ (1.16) is the highest.
Looks like we'll be up against some great competition again.

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

Quotent is somewhat skewed by combination of your seven banners with our seven banners;)

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

4, 25, 39, 842, 1013, 1251, and 1726 all have a few banners as well.

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

mmm- did I hear a LVR BBQ?

: )

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

I'll rerun the numbers sometime soon, maybe overnight. Maybe middle of the week. In other words, some time.

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

What, there is life outside of CD?:D

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

No, but it requires some tweaking to frcfeed which are giving me some difficulty. As soon as I get those done it is a simple matter of running a shell script.

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

Life outside of CD? Ohhh you mean facebook, youtube, AIM, and texting? Gotcha.

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

No. NURC and VEX. (This is mostly a joke, I don't compete in either of those... yet.)

Re: Time for a BBQ (Hardest Regional 2010 Edition)
 

In the interest of getting the data out there I have attached a CSV file containing the data. If you don't like this format wait a couple days until I or someone else manages to put it in a more human readable format. Just change the extension to .csv and it should work for you.

EDIT: I uploaded an excel spreadsheet with the data in a much cleaner format than the CSV.