[Knufire]

A point of discussion that came up in a Facebook thread on this subject was whether a region should prioritize growth rate or retention rate. I do not have specific numbers, but I am under the impression that Canada had a rather excellent retention rate other than the 2013 teacher strikes. It could be possible that they are not willing to increase the growth rate to the point that it starts adversely affecting the retention rate.

Originally Posted by cadandcookies

I'm a little bit curious about this line of thought. I know historically there has been a large amount of flak directed at Canadian teams travelling to other regionals (like 1114 at Pittsburgh in 2011, ugh), but I'm not sure how FIRST pushing for Canadian/Ontario districts can be taken as "pushing Canadian teams aside." Could you elaborate? My understanding of the District model is that regions are given a number of slots based on the amount of teams they have relative to the total amount of FIRST teams/the amount of teams attending Champs. Isn't the model just bringing the amount of Canadian teams attending Champs into proportion? I remember an analysis last year that Ontario was the most overrepresented region at Champs*. I get that frankly Ontario is one of, if not the most competitive, region in the world, but proportionally it does end up soaking up a lot of spots at Champs. I haven't seen any data from this year though, so I can't comment on whether it was the same in 2014.

*Full disclosure, Minnesota was the most underrepresented if I remember correctly

Credit to Navid Shafa from 1983 for the data.