Originally Posted by evanperryg
Qualitative observation comes with inherent bias, and it's extremely noticeable from qualitative scouter to qualitative scouter. I've got one who's been doing it for 3 years now and I'm pretty sure half his notes say "don't pick" somewhere inside them, while I have other scouters that sympathize with a robot that hasn't moved for most of an event. (Though after Waterford, I guess the notion that a dead robot is a bad robot no longer applies) No type of data can be utilized as effectively as possible without the other types. Pit data, match stats, and qualitative observations are all important factors in making strong picks and making strong strategies.
You don't. You might think you do, but you don't. If 4 years and over 120 matches at the helm (like the medieval reference?) of the 2338 scouting team has told me anything, it's that scouters will never know everything an astute drive team will know. Even if they aren't willing to admit it, that drive team knows each and every thing that could possibly go wrong with their machine, each angle that, when pushed, will easily throw their robot out of position, exactly how tall and how close a blocker needs to be to shut them down. Everything. Details that could never conceivably be seen by a scouter, because they are details that couldn't be seen unless a one-in-a-million situation occurrs in which that weakness is exposed.
Sounds like either those scouts are poorly trained, or they don't have an effective, ergonomic scouting system. After having problems with data accuracy in 2014, we switched to our current system and have found great success with it. If your data is clearly wrong, consider redesigning your entry method.
Go on TBA, and find the 4 or 5 character code next to the name of the event. For example, the Midwest Regional is "ILCH" and FiM Waterford was "MIWAT." I'll be honest, we don't do any data validation on the code you put in there, besides the character count. However, keep in mind that once we release the publicly-available support for database queries, you'll need to enter whatever code you used in order to get your data, so I'd strongly suggest making sure all of your scouters use the same code.
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