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Ranking
Hi all,
Second day of Peachtree - yay! Now that we're actually playing matches and having the ranking system react, it doesn't make very much sense to us. My team has lost a few matches due to mechanical problems, and have found ourselves going up in the rankings for no reason. We have even missed matches and gone up. I talked to a team that had won 80% of their matches and are ranked towards the bottom of the list. I'm confused. How is this supposed to work? Like I've read the rules and all, but what?! Cheers -Tanner |
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Dont worry, this years ranking systems has thrown everyone at the Kansas City Regional off as well.
Example: we were ranked 5, lossed 9 to 0 and went to rank 2. :eek: We are just going with the flow here. |
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Yeah, we've can't change it so there's not much to do. Hopefully some of the rookie teams in the top will realize its not all about ranking. -Tanner |
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Did you guys go into this without reading and understanding the seeding rules?
This leaves me completely baffled and befuddled. |
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People who are surprised by their low rank, despite winning matches need to A) STOP TAKING PENALTIES!!! and B) Strategize with the rules in mind.
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Maybe we need to get people to make multiple announcements about this at events, many teams obviously don't understand this based on the gameplay I'm seeing (I'm not just picking on you two).
WINS AND LOSSES DO NOT MATTER FOR RANKING THIS YEAR. They affect how many qualifying points you receive from a match, but after QPs are assigned the system no longer tracks who won and lost the match. Quote:
You want high scores in this game! If both alliances are scoring high it is much better to win than lose, but a 5-0 loss is better than a 3-0 win!! |
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Pro-tip:
Friends don't let friends play defense! (in qualifications) |
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I understand the rules.
a day of competition made sure of that, it just baffled me that we were stomp and still shoot up 3 ranks, thats all. |
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I am personally becomming a fan of this new ranking system. It's really factoring in a strength of schedule into the rankings. In the old system, a 2-0 win was worth the same as a 10-9 win (I know...ranking points...but the W was the most important). Now, a 10-9 win is a HUGE score. We'll see how it plays out, but so far, I'm a fan. And, as I look through the top teams at KC on the rankings, I agree with most of them, which is more than I could say for the old system at times. |
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Well, yeah we always try not to get penalties (isn't that the general goal for any alliance?).
I'm not saying I don't understand how it is found, I'm saying I don't understand why it was made to be like this. It doesn't make much sense to me. 'Course I never understood completely how it worked in year's past, but at least it made logical sense. -Tanner |
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I'm not saying one way is better than the other, yet. Let's get through a few weeks of regionals and Champs before hashing it out. All I'm saying is that I REALLY didn't like the ranking process going into this morning, but after watching it play out for a day, it's not so bad. Will there be flaws in any system that uses such a small population of data to "rank" teams? Of course. That's the world in which we choose to compete. I'm just saying it's not as bad as I thought it would be going in. |
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I would be a fan of the new ranking system if the matches were higher-scoring. Here is an example of what happened to us:
We won a match 3-2 and were very happy, this was a fairly good match for us. Then, a robot on our alliance was assessed 5 <G46> penalties and the other team 1, causing us to lose 0-1. This means we get 2 seeding points. The other team gets 1 + 6 = 7 seeding points. This is a huge number of seeding points when the matches are usually won 1 or 2 to 0 (we only have around 8 seeding points total). A win due to exorbitant penalties on a good alliance is not a strategic win, and should not be rewarded like this. |
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Moral of the story: Don't get penalties!! |
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Yeah, but Michigan teams still need to win every match possible to quailfiy for states (State ranking points are based on wins/loses).. Kinda throws a monkey wrench into everything...
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I love this new rating system. I still do not comprehend why someone would want to play defense during qualifications, unless that's their outlet to get into the eliminations. Speaking of that, im going to get a good laugh when those scores are much lower than what we're already seeing. |
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Being the #8 seed is worth more than 4 wins, and being the number 1 seed is worth the same as 8 wins. |
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Yeah it seems that after 5 solid hours of live streaming today. A significant amount of teams don"t realize how they should play the game. Blocking hurts everyone, and multiple times people tried bumping robots trying to elevate. But holy cow, THERE WERE SO MANY PENALTIES!!!:ahh:
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Well, as was posted somewhere else earlier.... "FIRST finally gives us a game where human beings can understand the scoring system, and then goes and gives us a ranking system that requires a two hour seminar on co-opertition to comprehend."
I get what FIRST is trying to do with the ranking system. I get the fact that Dean Kamen managed to get a patent on it... I've even read the patent (and the many objections the USPTO raised to it)... AND I get the fact that it is the rules, and that FIRST can set whatever rules they want. Even if I think the rule happens to be needlessly confusing, it is still a rule. But it would really help to get people (who don't geek out over the FRC rules book) interested and excited about FRC if the ranking system could be quickly and easily understood by a person off the street without a lengthy lecture on "changing culture". Thank goodness the elimination rounds will make sense to people who come to watch them. Jason P.S. My sympathies to those who don't "get it". It will all make sense if you watch a four hour retrospective video on the collected speeches of Dean and Woodie. You might still not LIKE it, but at least you'll "get" it. |
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FIRST has made winning or losing a match this year unimportant (for qualification matches). Its how everyone does (including your opponents) that affects your seeding score; not winning or losing. FIRST seem to have set up a version of the prisoner dilemma (game theory). Almost everyone I have talked to at the DC regional (on Friday) is playing this year's game as a zero sum game(my gain is your lost).
Imagine the scoring potential if all SIX robots were working together to score all the points for blue or for red. According to this years seeding formula: winner seeding points = (winning alliance score - Penalty) + 2*(losing alliance score) loser seeding points = winning alliance score If everyone works together and the losing alliance does not have any points, then the winner and the loser get the exact same seeding score. Where this is not a zero sum game is the number of balls score will be much higher when all six robots are working together then working against each other or the alliance leaving each other alone. Its very easy to move all the balls from the middle to the offense zone if there are 3 to 4 robots in the middle zone. You're more likely to have a robot free to handle a returning ball if the other robots taking a little longer dealing with their current ball(s). With the remaining 2 to 3 robot in the scoring zone, you have a situation where 1 to 2 robots are scoring while the other robot is collect balls to be score. With 6 working robots, the limitation on points will be how fast the human players can get the balls back into play, so that there are no penalties. Under this strategy, the robots that cooperate the best together get the best seeding scores. |
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I avoided looking at the rankings most of the day because I didn't want to give myself a bigger headache than I already had from queing in week 1.
I had people coming up to me requesting tutorials about the ranking system. How do you explain this to the average person off the street what's going on? Whatever happened to making a game easy for the public to understand? |
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Now the hard part -- explaining why FIRST wants us to do this to a non-FIRSTer. |
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It seems to me that if you know you are going to lose a match anyhow, you're better off to score for your opponents, and not at all for yourself. Does this make sense?
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I have declined to comment on the scoring system all year...
So all I have to say is: Any scoring system that ever gives people incentive to score on themselves at ANY point during ANY match needs to be re-evaluated. What was wrong with the old days when the teams that won got the best seeds? What part of earning your seeding position isn't fair? |
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The highest possible QP comes from a tightly-fought match, but the most reliable QP comes if both teams agree to co-operate and only score on one side. |
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I wonder if there is a relationship between rank and opponents average score. For the first time, I don't want my opponents to be rookie box bots that cannot score. I would rathar lose 2-1 than win 1-0, so good opponents may be necessary to rank high. While this system may add a bit of 'strength of schedule' it may have put too much weight on it.
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The good news is that there was apparently no reasonable way to make this fruity plan work in the finals. Not that they didn't probably try. And that's the nicest way to say what I think about this.
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Honestly, I think that the GDC is trying to stray away from the traditional team 1 has the 2 best bots and an okay one. Then all other alliances are more balanced.
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We thought of the idea of blocking our goals in a match to get zero points, just to prove a point that the system is just skewed strange. Quote:
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I don't know, it's just really confusing to me how things can be made so much to make everything seem "fair" in a competition where there are winners and losers. I can see where the GDC/Dean got the idea to make things "more fair" for the losing alliance, but at some point in life, we have to learn that not everything is rewarding in the big picture. In the team's picture, they learn so much only if they take advantage of it. Still doesn't dwell with me, but like it is what it is. We have to make due with it. -Tanner |
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Teams often overlook Section 9 of the manual, this year it was very evident. Hopefully by championship all teams will understand the system. |
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I think the scoring system has many problems, but I am starting to see how it works.
The system obviously degenerates when the scores are low and the penalties are high (see my previous post.) But, if you work with the assumption that you are a good team, you will see that you will be highly rewarded, and rewarded more for winning against other good teams. The system isn't supposed to sort the entire team list by how good they are, it is only supposed to find the top 8. The rest are essentially random, since they are going off mostly other teams' scores. The top alliances are going off mostly their scores and their coopertition. The one thing I still don't like is how in a 5-5 tie, one penalty causes a 10 point swing in how seeding points are distributed. It gets too discontinuous on evenly-matched teams. |
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Just my thoughts on this...
First of all, I don't think the ranking system really affects the non-FIRST people that are coming into the arena and watching the tournament. Most of them really don't watch a ranking screen to see everyone's rank. They see the competition and how the matches turn out. Of course, explaining to them why all the robots might be all scoring on one side might be fun...but usually, if all the teams are scoring and playing offense, then I think it looks good to them. I was surprised at how well the rankings worked out at Kettering. From my general observations, the top 8 teams were deserving and I didn't see any "oh they shouldn't be up there" teams. I think it was also backed up by most of the top 8 picking other top 8 teams which showed to me that the rankings were right. Sure, it's a strange system, but I'm anxious to see how it plays out for the rest of the season. We all just have to do two things... 1. Tell everyone to stop playing defense in quals. I think when people are surprised when they lose a match and still go up in standings the message will get across, but the more points scored in a match on either side helps everyone! 2. Please, please, please fix your robots to stop taking penalties. And if you have taken penalties in a match and have a yellow card for it, please be careful to not get a red card. It was sad to see two red card matches and disqualifications in elimination rounds at Kettering. |
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cooperatition points go off the losing alliance's actual score or unpenalized score?
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If you were at FLR this weekend, you saw members of the red alliance go over and exchange high-fives with the blue alliance after a qualifying match...why? Because all six teams were deliberately scoring goals only for the blue alliance. (I think the score was 11-0 for that match.) It was great for the seeding points for those six teams, but anyone who didn't understand the seeding point system - including members of the general public who might never have seen a FIRST event before - would have have been totally baffled.
Yes, it's strategy, and it does encourage cooperation. But it also removes competition, at least until the elimination rounds. It's a bit odd to be cheering for your team's robot when it spends the entire match sitting in front of your goal to block it! :confused: |
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Our first match on Friday morning we didn't move one inch (not a robot problem, a person forgetting to do something problem). We were outscored 3-1, but due to penalties won 1-0. Our seeding score was 7 (1 + 2*3).
I will come out and say I do not like the system. I will say that I prefer wins and losses. However, I understand the reasoning for the 2x losing score and how it was implemented pre-2004 was much better than this year. The reason: in those years the losing alliance got their own penalized score so there was incentive to score for yourself. The small tweak made this year from the pre-2004 years is breaking the system. More and more teams are figuring out that 6-0 is better for their situation. If the GDC intended this, then I guess they are getting what they wanted. If this is an unintended consequence, then that is unfortunate for all of us participating. With that said, I am not so concerned about people outside of FIRST understanding the ranking. Why? Because I have been telling people I know that are not part of FIRST to come to the event Saturday around 12:30pm since 2000. Like many sports, round robin play (aka qualification matches) are borrrring. Elimination round matches are exciting. This has worked for people I know for years as I have many repeat spectators at many of our local events. When the season is over, I will give FIRST my opinion of the seeding system as I feel it is my responsibility; but if it stays this way for many seasons, my teams will live with it. I can guarantee this: I will push like crazy to have IRI be based on wins & losses in qualifying!!! |
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Since so many teams and even more spectators are confused with the new ranking system where wins/losses do not matter, why doesn't FIRST show the seeding points each alliance gains instead of just goals, bonus, penalties and final score? I think this would really force people to understand the new ranking system.
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I think that this year's ranking scheme has worked very well, and that is because now in order to be ranked in the top 8, you must beat good teams. Winning a great offensive match against good opponents is now worth much more than winning a match against three robots that do not move.
Take a look at the Kettering District top 8 qualifiers: 67 910 2619 33 2834 27 245 201 All of these teams were very deserving of their top 8 spots. (2619 is a beastly scoring machine; same with 2834. If you don't know them now, you will know them by the end of the season.) The reason 67 got seeded #1 was because we won q45 with 33 and 2834 and against 910, 70, and 894. Not only did we have good partners... the opposing alliance was amazing as well. 910 was ahead of us by a large margin in seeding points, and when we won 12-11 without penalties, it boosted our seeding score by 34 points. If 910's alliance would have won, it would have boosted their score by around the same number of points, and they almost certainly would have been ranked #1. But the thing is that the ranking scheme didn't screw 910 over for losing that one match. They still ended up ranking second. What I liked about this is that our matches against powerful opponents (such like 2619, 27, 910, 201, 51, 2834, and 245) gave us more points than "easy" matches where we were allied with good partners and didn't face very much opposition. A not so good robot can win a lot of matches if it has an easy schedule. But that robot cannot win a high scoring match against good teams, and therefore will not be ranked high. This is the reason why I believe the new ranking system better determines which teams should be in the top 8. Also, I do not think that the new ranking system encourages you to score for the other alliance. Say your alliance can score 11 balls in a match. So you can either get 11 seeding points by scoring for yourself, or you can score 5 of those balls for the other alliance and win the match 6-5. This gives you 16 points, 5 more than if you only scored for yourself. But then the other alliance can score a couple balls or hang at the end of the match, or your alliance could get penalties, and bam, you've lost. In my opinion, that's too much risk. But what about the other regionals/districts? Do you think the ranking system worked well for determining the top 8, or did it fail? |
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I understand that they want to find a better way of ranking seeding points but this just seems too full of political correctness of trying to make everyone feel good. Kind of the new scoring rules of t-ball. Everyone wins so no one feels bad.
A better way can surely be found. Believe me, our team has had years when our bot did great but the alliances we were in just didn't do well. So, even though we did well individually we have been seeded low on the list. We ended up getting picked for alliances in the quarter finals anyway most of the time. Because of profiling, this happens quite often. |
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I'm afraid this was a case a fixing something that wasn't broken.
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I'll side with the game committee on this one, at least for the time being. I think if it were the win based system we'd see far too many of these matches end 0 - 0. I think that ballances out these odd everyone score on the same goals matches.
The BCS calculation for College Football definitely isn't simple. I don't think a complicated ranking system makes the sport any less interesting or entertaining. It's the odd strategies that develop from this particular complicated ranking system that make it confusing. I'd be in favor of an even more complicated system that didn't encourage this strange behavior. I really don't get these "everyone score in the same side" matches. Lets say the blue alliance decides to score in the red goals. Why wouldn't the red alliance get a comfortable lead then start scoring in the blue goals? It'd be like getting two points for every goal scored, points that can't be taken away by penalties. |
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If you agree to score in Red goals, then there are pluses and minuses for both teams: Red: Certainty of a win, easy to tell if Blue isn't following through Blue: As long as Red follows through, you'll get at least as many points as they do. If Red takes penalties (or even if you take penalties), they don't count against you in seeding points. |
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I agree with something Travis Hoffman said in another thread, Quote:
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I agree with what BrendanB and a few others have said.
On the point of the general public seeing this, yeah its not entirely evident, but it really is when the team wins a match by a few points, returns to the pit cheering, and then the cheering goes away when we find our rank moved down. 'Course I'm probably overstating something here, but we kinda got the feeling that is was "ok" to lose (as we moved up), but it kinda pushed us away from playing the game the best that we could, not that we didn't try to anyway. -Tanner |
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G29 Quote:
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Yep, it is wierd, but correct. |
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-Tanner |
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I'm a little surprised at how much of an uproar this is causing. I'm looking at the final standings for all the week 1 regionals, and the top bots are still at the top where they belong. In the cases where a non-elite robot makes it into the top 8: that happened with the wins/losses ranking format too.
Here are some numbers from week 1 results that some people might find interesting. Code:
Week 1 (Avg. Match pts) (Avg. Seed pts/match) (#1 Seed pts/match) (#8 Seed pts/match) |
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Actually, this was what our alliance did for our last qualification match, at the KC regional. We'd noticed the system didn't seem fair (why should the losing team get the points that the winning team scored?) so our alliance scored in the other alliance's goals. It ended up 13-0 with one penalty, so they had 13 QPs and we had 14. It was interesting, because we actually ended up playing defense in front of our own goals.
I agree that the system at least needs to be revised, to place more emphasis on wins and losses and less on the scores. Another problem that you could run into is that a blowout gives both alliances more QPs than a hard-fought match with well-played defense, where the score ends up, say, 2-3. It is also probably better for a losing team to lose by a lot-not a way to encourage continued scoring even if you're down. A final problem is that all the hullaballoo about ranking points means that teams may have to entirely change their strategies between qualification matches and finals. |
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- Sunny |
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Blue would put two robots in front of Blue's goals (that Blue would normally be trying to score on) to guarantee that Red couldn't score for the Blue alliance. |
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"working together" in quals isn't something I want to do; it eliminates the competitive fire from both sides, and frankly it just takes the fun out of it. Limiting competition limits the leaning experience. It's a shame that the rules are aimed at preventing a hard fought competition, because that's what's fun, and realistically, that's what the real world is like. Fluffing things over to help the losers feel better doesn't benefit anyone in the long run. I'll be honest, my team's performance left much to be desired last year. I didn't need people saying "oh well at least you tried" or have a skewed ranking system to help us. The best way to deal with it is to come in last. You can't learn unless you fail first. |
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Teams are not "manipulating" the rules by using this strategy. They are using the rules exactly as written. If that results in matches with no competition, then the RULES need fixing, not the strategy. |
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So many people are saying it's better to lose 0-5 than to win 3-0...but it's better yet to win 3-2. A 6v0 game where everyone gets the same number of seeding points doesn't benefit anyone; nobody rises or falls in the ranking. A game-theory analysis tells me that the best overall strategy is to score points and play to win. |
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As for how to change the rules to prevent exploitation, I would simply give the winning team the combined score and the losing team half of that. The higher the scores the better it is for both teams, but you also want to win as it will give you many more points then losing. |
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Just like NFL head coaches who call a timeout to "ice" the opposing team's kicker. If you don't like the game, change the rules. ~ |
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I don't know if other teams realize that seeding points are only important for the top 8-12 teams to become alliance captains. If you are not an alliance captain, high seeding scores will not mean anything at all. We did not pick based on ranking that use seeding points.
So for teams that are ranked in the 20s and below and it is close to the end of the qualifying rounds, why sit in front of your goal to get meaningless seeding points. Go and fight hard and show other teams and spectators why you spend so many hours building that robot. Why pay $5000 and all the late nights to just sit in front of your goals? We don't care about seeding points. If you can play the game well and fight hard to win even when you are behind, other teams will notice and pick you to play in the elimination round. Sportsmanship is about trying your best and give your opponent a good honest match. Winning or losing is not important as long as you try hard. That is what I teach my students so I will never agree to play this scheme. However I do not think it is un-GP, I just don't want any part of it. |
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Reading and understanding a set of rules for a game and forming a winning strategy based on those rules is not "teaching kids to exploit the law". It's teaching them how to think and compete. ~ |
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Just to let people see how a regional could work with the seeding points, we put this ranking simulation together in the beginning of the year. We are pretty sure it is correct. If you find it in error, let me know. It is a good training to help with understanding the seeding system.
The workbook contains two sheets, matches and Rankings: Matches Initial Matches were set up with a 57 team regional and 8 matches Penalties Random Number between 0 to 5 Score Random Number between 0 to 10 To Run Simulation is a two step process Matches Worksheet: To obtain a random penalty and Score press control+= on the Matches Worksheet Rankings Worksheet: To obtain the rankings, prese (ctrl+shft+z) on the Rankings Worksheet to run the macro. This macro will tally the wins, losses and ties Will calculate seeding points and coopertition bonus Add the qualification seeding and sort based on the total qualification points Match played: On the ranking sheet, it shows each match the team played to review the scores The visual basic Macro simply searches through the scores and tally's wins/losses, and calculates seeding points and coopertition (TM) bonus. Hope it helps. |
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We just came back from Granite State, and came in last place.
Going into the competition I thought the seeding points were confusing but other then that didnt have much of a problem with it. Then getting to competition and seeing how things worked i stated to have a problem. I understood that the algorithm was there to not promote a blow out match (9-0) or something, but when it came to our matches all them were low scoring (1-0). Which meant that even though we were winning the majority of our matches and were the only robot that scored in the match we ended up being seeded last place. Even ones we lost were 0-1 matches which meant that we had no chance of seeding high. The algorithm works if you have higher scoring matches but not if it is low scoring. I understand the having a winning record is not important but our matches were in coopertition spirit i.e. close in score but because it was so low we ended up getting no seeding points. So here the algorithm worked against us. 9 out of our 10 matches were 0-1 whether we won or lost. Thus we were in last place. |
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(I'm a little confused how "coopertition" is defined as "scoring for your opponents, when if you cooperpete correctly they gain NOTHING from being scored on and only from you scoring on yourself. That's stupid) |
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As I reflect on the numerous threads & posts flooding CD on this topic, I find myself wanting to comment on the greater objective/direction that this year's "seeding system" is promoting. Aside from the strategies, rules, approaches, legal vs. ethical, and all the other ideas that have been discussed here, I would like draw the attention to what I feel is an alarmingly slippery slope FIRST seems to be approaching by engraining the "coopertition" concept into "competition" rules. A little background may help explain my position: 1. I've coached my 11th grade son's FLL/FRC teams since he was in the 4th grade. As a FIRST Operational Partner I've run one of the country's largest FLL State Championship tournaments for the past four years, that attract 750+ students and 85+ FLL teams to the California's Central Valley each year. I'm a huge fan and ambassador of FIRST and its impact on the youth in our communities. 2. At the 2006 World Festival, my FLL team won 1st place in the first ever FLL Alliance Challenge with the Ocean Odyssey missions, where we worked with 3 other teams from the U.S and Denmark - our first feel for true FIRST coopertition - (the Denmark team didn't even speak english) IT WAS AWESOME! 3. I've also coached every sport my 3 kids have been involved in from baseball, football, hockey, soccer, etc. - and have always appreciated the distinct differences a program like FLL/FRC brings to kids who gravitate away from traditional sporting programs - and the opportunities they find here. So with all that said, I can tell you from my experiences that a large part of the attaction of FIRST is the packaging of learning (math/science/tech) WITH the excitment of COMPETITION that speaks to our innate competitive spirit that I believe drives the human race towards accomplishment, improvement, and connecting with others. And while I'm not wanting get all philosophical here, I can't help but feel this year's game philosophy is squelching this spirit AND forcefully directing our brightest minds into a "thinkset" that I feel is ultimately weakening us as a society/community. It's been mentioned in other threads/posts how there are plenty of opportunties for coopertition off the competition field - and I agree 100%. I'm proud of how well this program promotes and practices it (this web site is a classic example) - our team would be lost without it! Even as we get onto the competition field - the alliance format allows for tons of cooperation! But let's cooperate to triumph over the opposition! What's wrong with that? Opposition is a force in life that we must all learn to deal with - and I've always felt that FIRST's approach of competing & dealing with opposition by THINKING & USING YOUR MIND was the perfect answer ... Not by removing the opposition and morphing it into cooperation. Opposition doesn't always WANT to cooperate, yes? But I do fear FIRST is trying to change the face of competition ... as strong competition seems to be viewed more and more as a bad thing, so bad that we have to start changing the rules/game to MAKE SURE that we cooperate. I know I'm not alone in my thinking as I've seen others lightly comment on this elsewhere, but I want to put my stake in the ground and call a spade a spade. Let's not water-down honest competition that boasts "the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat" - it is afterall what makes this program tick - and if you don't belive me, look at all the posts of how teams are trying to use the coopertition rules to - do what? WIN!! Don't get me wrong, I'm not a proponent of win at all costs, and/or winning is the only important thing. However, "striving to win" in a gracious and professional manner brings with it amazing results ... many more than "striving to cooperate" will ever see. I'm sorry, but that's just weak. I understand the lofty touchy-feely goal of everyone's a winner, but we don't live in a world where everyone's a winner, nor should we want to, IMO. In Pixar's movie, The Incredible's, the villian Syndrome wants to sell his super inventions to everyone in the world, giving everybody superpowers - "Because when everyone is super ... (evil laugh) no one will be!" Kind of corny, I know, but it speaks volumes. However, not being a winner, doesn't mean you're a loser either. The FRC program and its outcomes are dealing with different degrees of success, yes? But it's the COMPETITION that creates the scale on which we measure those degrees. It's the COMPETITION that makes us want to move up those scales each and every time we COMPETE. It's the COMPETITION that makes us and everyone around us, better. You can't call something a competition, and then strip out all the elements that engage our competitive spirits. It's crushing, depressing, and outright frustrating. So as I step off my soapbox, I just wanted to share my thoughts around the subject and hope they serve as a warning to FIRST and to join in solidarity with others that have spoken out against this new system and its inherent problems. My concerns may go deeper, because I'm so passionate about what this program has always been about, and I'm concerned about its future. But I suppose I could have justed posted the following: Minimize Competitive Components = Minimize Growth & Attraction & Spirit Force "coopertition" through rules/regulation = choke the competitive spirit that's made this program what it is </soapbox> |
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