Quote:
Originally Posted by Madison
I'd like some clarification from folks who are more familiar with FiM and MAR than I am regarding how teams playing in a third+ district event affect point distribution.
Currently, teams accrue points at only the first two events they attend; they may compete in a third event, but any points that would be earned seem to disappear into the ether. Since there are a finite number of points available for teams to earn per event, the presence of one or more teams that are competing at a third event has the effect of shrinking the number of points available to the other teams. If a team attending its third event seeds first, for example, and wins the event, that's 46+ points (or so) that disappear.
How does this affect teams competing in their first and second events in later weeks? It seems to me that, given that they're competing against more experienced teams, they're likely to not perform as well and will receive fewer points than did the the teams that have already completed their two 'real' district competitions. This has the effect of lessening their chance of attending the district and world championship.
Is this tinfoil hat stuff? What is the argument against taking a team's two best performances for point accrual?
|
There are very very few MAR teams who compete at a third district event, making it essentially a non-issue for MAR. Granted, there are numerous teams who opt to compete at another regional competition (especially in 2012, when teams where still skeptical about the district system or had already planned on attending particular events). I understand third district events are more common in Michigan (though still the exception rather than the rule).
This was one of the questions addressed by Jim Zondag in his
FiM/district FAQ he posted earlier this year. Here are the related questions:
Quote:
Q10: “Why do you allow some teams to play a third district, isn’t this an unfair advantage?”
A10: One of our primary goals is to increase FRC team participation wherever possible. In pursuit of this goal, we feel that offering vacant slots to teams who want them serves the goals of FIRST and FiM better than leaving them empty. While this does give additional playing time to some teams, all teams who wish to play at an additional event are free to enroll in the annual lottery for these available slots. All teams have equal opportunity for these lottery slots.
Also, if we left these spots empty, we would be giving additional advantage to any team attending a partially unfilled event. Mathematically, the system is fairer overall if the events are all fully attended. We want all events to have the same statistical significance in our system.
We add events in units of 40 slots. Growth forces us to add events each time we add 20 new teams. Usually the number of teams/40 leaves a remainder of 15-20 spots open. We prefer to fill these for event balancing.
Q11: “If teams play at 3 district events, why can’t they use the results from their 2 best events, rather than using the results of the first 2 events?”
A11: One of the core concepts of the FRC build season is the “tools down” concept surrounding bag day. The intent is that the robots are done at the end of the build season. For this reason, all teams are on equal standing relating to available build and upgrade time at their first and second events. This is not true at the 3rd event. For this reason, as long as FRC continues to have machine access restrictions, we will continue to use only the results from the first 2 events played in our ranking system.
|
For the most part, I agree with his reasoning and decision. You'll find that a majority of teams make significant progress from their first district to their second (the unbagging period after seeing your robot compete for real is a godsend in this regard). While teams competing later in the season are often at a disadvantage compared to teams who competed earlier in the year, this is true in the traditional regional format as well. Allowing teams to use their two best results rather than their first two creates an inordinate advantage to the teams lucky enough to gain access to a third district.