Re: Michigan State Championship
 

MSC is definitely one of the hardest, most competitive, and most exhilarating FIRST Events out there. I can tell you right now, the elimination rounds are going to be intense...very intense.

Best of luck to all teams attending, we'll see you there! :D

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

"Cultural Awards"... From my understanding FIRST wanted to make it and the Chairman's above all that "petty" point stuff. I don't have a source for this, just baseless rumors I have heard.

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

The thing that confuses me here is how a team qualifies for nationals in Michigan. Winning a district gives you quite a few points, while a Chairman's award gets you 0 points. I understand it is an auto qualify for States, but these points also count towards national qualification. I was disappointed when I saw a big 0 for award points next to 548 after Waterford where we won the Chairman's award.
As far as the competition goes before you say Einstein is going to be far more competitive then States. Look at the teams going, assume they were all on one field at nationals, are there enough great robots out there to make the other 3 fields just as competitive? Also take a look at the Winners from last year from states and nationals. States is 1918, 469, and 2834. Nationals is 67, 294, and 177. Which do you think would win?

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

I wouldn't be so quick to diminish the quality of a team because they don't play in Michigan.
They are quite a few good teams who play outside of Michigan actually.

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

The year before you could say the same thing. 67, 217, and 65? Well one would be playing on both alliances lol

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

As always there are some amazing teams/robots attending MSC this year. So, at the end of qualifications who do you think will be the #1 overall seed?

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

I do not think the intent was to downplay the quality of non-Michigan teams, but instead to provide an example of how intense the MSC will be.

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

I defiantly agree that they are many many good teams outside of Michigan. I was saying that to look at MSC vs National as far as competitiveness, look to see if there are enough robots to fill the other 3 fields at nationals at the caliber of MSC. If there are then nationals is more difficult to win. If not then MSC is more difficult to win. Obviously in Michigan I don't get to see all of the great teams outside of it so I don't know which is harder to win.

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

Not to dismiss the quality of other teams, but we went up a very similar if not more skilled alliance, that some called unstoppable...

But on the other hand I do agree with some of what you said about the Chairman's award that does deserve points as it is a very important award. But you have to look at it from a comparative stand point to other states. For example, there are many central and southern states, who share regionals, and out of the 2 or 3 states that get to participate only one sends a Chairman's team to St Louis. So to give all 9 district Chairman's winners more of a chance to compete at champs for Chairman's would cause a huge imbalance in being able to compete for Chairman's at champs.

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

Of course, Michigan is a good 8% of FRC, so of the 60-ish RCA/DCA winners, about 4-5 of the CMP Chairman's contenders should, if it's based on amounts of teams, be from Michigan. The reason there's 3 SCA (State Chairman's Award) winners is likely because there were three Michigan regionals, and thus three RCA winners, prior to the District system.

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

This decision comes from FIRST NH. The FIRST home office wants the 3 "cultural awards" (CA, EIA, RAS) to remain separate from the rest of the competition. They believe that if we give points for these awards, that this somehow degrades them. I am sure that everyone who's team got one of these awards would probably disagree with this. If so, please forward any and all complaints to Bill Miller at FIRST. I have tried for 3 years, but apparently I am not convincing enough.

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

Wow, I had no idea of this. That's pretty, actually really really, dumb.

Thank you Jim for pointing this out to those of us outside of FiM. I think a letter is in order.

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

For all of you aspiring Math and Science students out there:

The reason that the MSC is so awesome is that it is the only in season event that is screened for robot capability. In 2009 and 2010 it has surpassed even the World championship divisions on competitiveness, falling second only to the IRI both years (the IRI is also screened for quality). This year will likely be the same.

Run the numbers and the truth of this should jump out at you:
- The Average OPR of most 2011 Regional and District Events is 12 or less.
-The Standard Deviation of the OPRs at all the events so far is greater than the average. (get your Stats textbook and understand what this means!)
- Going into the MSC, the Average OPR will likely be 21, nearly double the average for all other events this year.
- The OPR Standard Deviation at the MSC will likely be the about 14, making it the only event where the Average - Stdev > 0, (again, check the math text to understand what this means).

So the MSC has the highest average capability, and the lowest variablity relative to the average, of any event so far this year. This is how you define a highly competitive environment: Lots of good teams, with similar capability, in the same place, at the same time.

Divisions at STL have not yet been defined, but doing the math on the 271 teams signed up so far, it is unlikely that any of the 4 STL divisions will have the concentration of skill that the MSC will have.

I, for one, live for events like this!
I can hardly wait for next weekend!

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

I might try my hand at a letter too, but after competition season. I've got a hunch it might be more carefully considered then.

Re: Michigan State Championship
 

The "top end" of teams at MSC is no better than the "top end" of the teams at CMP - less, in fact, because the best non-MI teams won't be there. However, only the top 1/3 of the teams in the state make it to MSC. This will change the caliber of the qual matches because every robot in every match will be very capable of playing the game. This will make every qual match comparable to elims at a regional/district. Elims will be perhaps comparable to division elims at CMP. Einstein remains in a class by itself.

On another note - TIMS is still not letting us register for MSC. I won't have access to a computer between now and noon and haven't been able to reach our alternate team contact to make sure he can get us registered. I'm sure we are not the only team in this situation. Hope it all works out...