Quote:
Originally Posted by techtiger1
I really never understood how FIRST determines who the BETA test teams are. Not saying they make bad choices, just saying the process is a little fuzzy.  |
From what I understand, FIRST looks at a number of criteria.
First, they only consider teams that apply for it. As the blog said, "more than" 200 teams applied, which to me says less than 250... and FIRST selected 90 teams. That's a pretty large percentage - probably somewhere around 40% of applicants.
Next, they look at languages. With 90 teams selected, they probably have 30 for each language (at least in the past they've balanced the number for each language, and that's what they did for Alpha Testing).
Next, they look at geography. Based on the teams selected, they want to try to go for a wide geographical distribution, and they want to hit the areas that are geographically dense with teams. It may not be possible, as you may not have any teams apply from a given state or region.
Taking all of that into consideration, they might select two teams from the same city (like St. Paul) who do different languages (like 2177 and 3130), in a densely populated region (like the 180+ teams in Minnesota). At the same time, another team in that same area might be rejected because they use the same language as a team that was accepted.
All of that is pretty much guaranteed - the Beta Test program wouldn't accomplish their goals without considering those items.
The rest is speculation. There's a lot of data that FIRST
can consider, but I don't know if they do or not. If a team has been a Beta/Alpha tester in the past, it could affect the results either way (you may want them involved again if they did a good job, or you may want to give another team the opportunity this year. For example, I believe, but haven't verified, that all of the Alpha teams have become Beta teams, and I know that my team has been a Beta or Alpha team every year for the past 4-5 years or so). FIRST may look for recommendations from the RD's for an area, on the assumption that the RD's would have an idea of which teams in an area would do better, with both the testing and outreach portions. FIRST may look at past regional results - consistent on-field performance could be an indication as to a team's technical success, while awards could be an indication of a team's ability to successfully communicate or interact with the FIRST community. It's not a perfect metric, to be sure, but we can all picture teams from our regionals who always seem to have technical issues with their robots, or who don't interact with other teams very well. Again, that's all speculation, but any of it could play a part.