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Unread 15-10-2012, 01:27
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DampRobot DampRobot is offline
Physics Major
AKA: Roger Romani
FRC #0100 (The Wildhats) and FRC#971 (Spartan Robotics)
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Location: Stanford University
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Re: Preventing "Garbage In, Garbage Out" in FRC

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery View Post
There's a massive difference between simply "accepting" material properties without knowing "why" and accepting design philosophies/methods/tools without understanding how and why they exist.
True, but the point remains. Some knowledge is extraneous to the process of design.

Even the omnipresent design principle "more simple is more effective" has more behind it than even most good designers know. It's just a, well, simplification of the design axiom "minimize information contained in a design." Although understanding this can make a designer better, it really isn't necessary in most cases. For most designers, it's enough to intuit why the "simple is better" theorem is true, rather than doing the more formal deduction that a simple design will usually (but not always) contain less information.

More and deeper understanding is always better, but there's a point where a certain level of understanding is good enough. Why does one plus one equal two? I believe the proof requires set theory, and I certainly wouldn't claim to understand it. Like I mentioned above, "It just is" is a good enough explanation in this case.

I agree that people need to think more before posting one more WCD. Even 254's drive isn't perfect for every game (they do change it every year) and it certainly isn't optimized for every team. Those posting the rather hackneyed WCD clones would do well to understand what aspects of the drive (milled out gears, good tensioning system and a few other things I chose not to name) make it extremely high preforming. Same with swerve drives, who's designers mistake their presence among winning teams with a swerve drive's necessity for winning. (I should know; I unsuccessfully campaigned to have one that I designed built my Freshman year.)

Not to emphasize the typically overemphasized metacognition too much, but designers need to understand what understanding is of high and low importance in order to be good designers. Knowledge, like all things, experiences diminishing returns at some point.
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