[P.J.]

As many people have said, both quantitative and qualitative (or as we call it on 910, objective and subjective) scouting are incredibly useful in different ways. Both have their strengths and their weaknesses. On 910, we do both but the jobs are handled by different people.

The objective/quantitative data is gathered via paper and pencil scouting on sheets mainly involving tally marks in boxes. These sheets contain a box for notes so that these scouts can record things they notice that are not accounted for on the sheet, but this is not their primary task. This is what the majority of scouts are doing at a competition. (Anywhere from 6 to 24 people depending on how many of our team members are able to attend competitions)

The subjective/qualitative data is the responsibility of a much smaller group. These scouts use a legal pad to simply take notes on robot features, driving ability, general strategies, strengths, weaknesses, etc. These scouts earn their position, they take a test before our first competition and the head scouts and myself look over their answers and determine who will be given this position. We also factor in our observations regarding their abilities as an objective scout. In the past this group has been as small as two people but as our scouting system has become more refined and our team has grown we are lucky enough to have 6 subjective scouts this year, allowing them to each take a position (R1, R2, etc.) and focus on only one robot per match.

While I am lucky enough to be working on a fairly large team, our overall system is able to be scaled to as few as 4 people if absolutely necessary.

tl;dr In my experience both Qualitative and Quantitative scouting are important components of a successful scouting system.