Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Zondag
Me either, and I'm not convinced yet that I need any new acronyms or methods. Everyone keeps obsessing about who is the best, but this is irrelevant until Einstien. At a real tournament, you don't really need a spreadsheet to tell you who is the best. This is obvious; my mom can tell you who is the best with no data at all. A thousand varied analytical methods will be able to give you the top 8 teams in order.
You do, however, need good data and methods to tell you who is 16th-24th. This is where the real value add of competitve analysis is: not for the first pick, but for the second.
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Every word is true (as is always the case with Jim). We don't spend much time obsessing over scouting data for our first round pick - the second round is where we focus our efforts.
As for West Michigan:
- 67 was the obvious first pick. They had the best all around package there. Scrap any data from Kettering.
- As #2 seed, 27 was our obvious pick. Another great all-around package.
- There were other good minibots and other decent hangers, but few that could put it all together.
- Our minibot didn't climb nearly as quickly as 27, 67, or 2054 (we'll try to change that by MSC). On Friday we deployed about 2/6 attempts with our backup mini. On Saturday, we made some corrections on the deployment, got the #1 mini back together, and were about 7/8 attempts. EMC data won't pick up on that, but anybody watching from the stands will.
- As with everyone, we had different issues at different times, all of which hurt us on ETC. RUSH also had technical problems Saturday morning. Things came together by eliminations, and standardized rating systems won't reflect that (for us or anybody else). That's why being there and knowing the status of things matters.
- I understand why our EMC is low, but I can't understand an ERC of 16 for 1918. I believe we are competitive with anybody out there for acquiring and hanging tubes.
- Alliances are definitely not the sum of their components. There is a point of diminishing returns in this game, and it is very easy to get in each other's way. If you look at the elimination data at WMD, our #2 alliance outscored the #1 alliance (albeit slightly) and our opponents underscored theirs over the course of the quarters and semi's, despite the fact that we worked through some of the higher seeds.
In general, an observer can tell who is capable of doing what, and they instinctively know when to dismiss certain match data. We tend to rate teams based on their expected capabilities when things are working properly. Recent performance is generally a better indication of future performance than historical average because of all the continuous improvement that goes on in FIRST. I think that ETC's might better reflect true capabilities if they omitted one or two of the lowest matches, or perhaps looked at a 10 match running average, like some golfing handicaps.
Regardless of the imperfection of any system, they have their merits. Many thanks to those who do the work to make them possible.
Edit: Another random observation from West MI - There was one qual match between 27 & 67. Other than that, neither 27 nor 1918 ever played against 67 or 2054 until the finals.