[Racer26]

Originally Posted by Duncan Macdonald

Every teacher I've ever had would give you at most half credit for not labelling your axises. To the best of my interpretation your sample size is 26 teams in a single year. Why did you choose Maryland?

I was rushing to create it in a short break from my day job. I was merely trying to create a visualization of the data, and with the information I gave with it, its easy to figure out what the graph shows.

I agree a sample size of 26 teams is not enough to make a conclusive argument, but it certainly appears to be evidence that there is only a very limited correlation between socioeconomic status of a team's area and their success on field, which is all I was trying to do. I was asked for evidence of my theory, so I delivered some.

I used Maryland, because the person asking for the data was from there, and I know Maryland is a medium sized area for FRC (so I could quickly process the data). Choosing Delaware would have made the data useless (there's only 2 or 3 teams there AFAIK) and choosing Michigan would have taken prohibitively long to process for the time I had. I didn't use Canada because I don't know of any data for median income by postal code.

Originally Posted by Duncan Macdonald

Do you think factors like years of experience or that individuals on those teams might be completely masking any meaningful correlation? (We've seen what team Copioli made in 3 days using some drills and extrusion.) Would you mind sharing your data analysis experience?

Certainly I think those factors impact the data, but there aren't many 2056s or 1114s in any particular area, and powerhouses don't seem to hail from a particular end of the socioeconomic spectrum, so I would say that with a large enough data set, it would have limited impact on the average.

While doing this exercise, I noticed that of the team numbers I recognized from Maryland as being successful enough teams that I've heard of them, many were from lower income ZIP codes. Hard to tell if that is just an artifact of my sample size though.

Originally Posted by Duncan Macdonald

Do you not believe in diminishing returns? How much better do you expect 118 or 148 to get if the build season was lengthened?

Certainly diminishing returns are a thing. My only really good frame of reference though, is watching 1114 and 2056. What I see there? Every year, 1114 doesn't make it to their practice matches much on the first day of their first regional, because they're busy toiling away applying everything learned between ship and competition on the practice bot to the competition robot. That tells me a longer build season would still benefit them.

To the other points being made in this thread, particularly the ones about raising the bar, instead of trying to drag down the superstars? The other really cool thing about FRC is that the superstars are for the most part eager to help. Go talk to them, and they'll help you to be more like them.