Quote:
Originally Posted by Alpha Beta
I'm confused. The regionals in question were 1625's Midwest and Lake Superior as compared to 1208's "watered down" Kansas City and St. Louis. On your list 2056, 67, 548, 254, 233, and 1717 attended none of those regionals and have no bearing on the comparison. Reputation is valuable before the event. In hindsight, actual performance would seem a better gauge to judge the strength of a regional. I'll grant you that 1208's St. Louis regional is probably the weakest of the 4.
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First, this is my LAST POST in a thread where a DIRECT REPLY to a given concern is being MISINTERPRETED (and I really hope that misinterpretation isn't deliberate). So, you better read this post right. If you don't understand this post, PM me and I'll edit it if I can. If you don't understand the quoted one, read this one.
Second, as I said, the post in question is in direct reply to a question. No part of the post is not in response to that question. The question asks, in essence, why do people say that KC (or, for that matter, any other regional) is weak when the facts say otherwise? So, I am
deliberately not consulting the facts in my response to the question. This also allows the question to be treated as a general question. Do I make myself clear? (Please note: This does not mean that the facts are not important. However, for the matter at hand, they are at best irrelevant and at worst a distraction.)
The list of teams is a list of teams that have what you might call "name recognition". That is, every team on there (with certain exceptions--see original post) would be reasonably expected to be recognized by reputation, even by a second-year student on a team, in just about any part of the FRC world. These are good teams, and held up as such. I don't need to go into why--I think everyone reading this thread knows why.
The point I was trying to make,
in direct response to a question about why a certain regional is considered weak, is that much of that consideration is based on the teams attending. If you get more than about 3-4 big-name teams at one regional, it's generally considered a tough regional. If you get fewer, it's generally considered a weak regional. Admittedly, this is
before stats come into play, and among those who figure that the stats don't matter or ignore them. ("There are lies, d----d lies, and statistics."--Mark Twain) Look at the preseason "which regional is strongest" threads.
So, in summary: A regional can be considered weak, even when the facts show that it is not, based on the teams attending. This simply means that the teams there need to get out there more, get themselves better recognized, and let the regional strength consideration take care of itself.
[/quote]Again, this entire thread is about this year.[/quote] That's all well and good for the best 2012 robots (thread's original topic). When we're talking about perceived regional strength, sorry, everyone and their little brother is going to be factoring in about the last three years if not more. Which is what I was referencing. When we're talking about actual regional strength, then we can bring in the numbers and discuss. You'll notice that I haven't done so.
In short: I was NOT discussing facts, and never claimed to be doing so, but rather going over perceptions and why they may be held in the face of said facts. I think some basic psychology is a good thing for engineers to know, especially if they have to deal with people, but apparently half the FRC universe disagrees with me and says facts are the only way to go, in which case, sorry, I'll get back to making assumptions about certain physical effects (which is what engineers do for a living at times).