[Angeliukm]

What's wrong with just playing the actual match?

Absolutely nothing! I have to admit that it's the most accurate way to find out (barring scoring errors).

I like your method for match prediction, but fail to see the use. Could you enlighten me as to how and why 20 uses this data and match prediction to gain an advantage? Or is it all for fun statistics?

As Team 20's drive coach this season, I found that the information was most useful for looking at the individual robots in a match rather than the outcome of the match as a whole. We have a match outcome predictor program, but it was... less than accurate. It was never used, which is why (I assume) Brennon is looking for an alternate method.

As Brennon pointed out, knowing the projected outcome of a match was useful in figuring out who might seed, but that sort of information is generally more useful when trying to make a pick list on Friday, not during a match. Knowing ahead of time who might be picking allowed us to figure out who they might pick, and how to put together an alliance to beat that potential alliance. That way, I did't have to try to make a split decision on the field with everyone singing the Jeopardy song. With that being said, there are upsets; we found that out when our Friday pick list suddenly became not as relevant as we thought it would be, about an hour before selections at Championships. It would be nice to have very accurate match predictions where surprises like that didn't happen.

However, the information that we use to predict the match's outcome is also very useful in and of itself before/during matches for all of the reasons that scouting is useful. With the type data that we were collecting, we could figure out the average score of each robot, and using that, the expected score of each alliance. By looking at the scouting data on our alliance partners and opponents for each match, I would know ahead of time that our two allies would probably score a combined total of about 15 points, and we could adjust our strategy accordingly (ask if they would be willing to play defense or feed). Or, if we were the lowest scorer on our alliance, we would consider playing defense ourselves if we could prevent the other alliance from scoring more points than we scored on average in telop. You can make your own (favorable) upsets that way.

So, you're right. The main value of prediction isn't knowing the outcome of the match; it's knowing how the match might be played.