Quote:
Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes
I agree that the perfect combination for scouting is a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data. However, few teams actually have a good enough scouting system to collect meaningful quantitative data, much less qualitative data. I've reviewed data from teams (including my own) after events, and at least half of the data sets I have seen are absolute garbage. I believe that almost all teams should focus first on improving their quantitative scouting before even thinking about qualitative scouting.
Basically, if your scouts can't reliably count the number of totes a team can stack in a match, why would you trust that their "qualitative" assessments of teams mean anything at all?
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We've had our issues with bad data at during events as we have worked our way through various scouting methods: pen/paper input into Excel and our tablet scouting from last year.
That has put us in positions where we have no accurate data during an event which has been caused by technology failing or the input/collection failing. Either way I can still rely on my scouts to give me and our pick list makers a good evaluation of robots. Last year this played a critical role at two of our events and many before then where we had to say, "Data aside how do we feel about this robot from what we've seen".
Like many have said in this thread you need to prioritize what you are scouting and why which is why we work hard to make sure our scouts know what to look for and why. If our data collection fails we have over half a dozen students who can offer their honest opinions regarding what they saw and work through their thoughts as a group to get a good feel for the field of robots.
I think too many teams overlook the aspect of having a serious discussion regarding scouting and why teams need to do it which is why they get poor results. If you want to be successful at an event you need to treat scouting like you do the drive team in terms of importance and not a separate group in the stands.