[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by lemiant

This is what I said. Rookies can be great, and I don't doubt that it is only a matter of time until one of them actually wins champs, but the odds ARE against them. Resources help you win, I don't think anyone here is going to challenge that.

And just for fun here's some math (Admittedly filled with all sorts of assumptions):

Last year, with numbers almost all the way to 4000, the un-weighted odds of a single team on the winning alliance being below 1000 was 25%... All three teams on the winning alliance were below 1000! The odds of that were 25%^3 or ~1.5%. that means that statistically the odds of all three teams on the wining alliance being below 1000 were just higher than the odds of any individual championship team winning. Obviously that is absurd! I could predict that the same will happen this year with at least a 50% chance of being right, you couldn't pick a winning team with anything approaching certainty.

Or take it one step further. 1114 was founded in 2003 so no team founded in a year after that would has ever won the championship. Assuming the ~2800 teams founded between 2003 and 2011 were founded in even increments of 350 teams per year the odds of none of these teams winning championships between 2004 and 2011 are:
((1200/1550) * (1200/1900) * (1200/2250) * (1200/2600) * (1200/2950) * (1200/3300) * (1200/3650) * (1200/4000)) ^3
or .00000054%.

I believe we can effectively determine from that number that veterans winning is not just statistical variation

Actually the odds are even worse than that...

Since FIRST went to the current divisional format in 2001 52.4% (74) of all Einstein slots (140 total) have been filled by just 24 teams with 2 or more Einstein trips!

35.7% of the total slots are taken up by just 12 teams with 3 or more trips.

42.9% (15) of all Championship Winner spots (35) in the same time frame were won by just 6 teams that have won 2 or more championships in divisional era!

The highest number team of the 24 is 1218.

The highest number team of the 12 is 968.

The highest number team of the 6 is 294.

All this said I'm willing to bet a coffee that with a list of 12 teams I can hit on 4 of the 12 Einstein competitors this year before I even know what anyone's robot looks like.

Edit: I forgot to cite my source, Jim Zondag's wonderful championship history white paper that he has published the last 2 years.