Quote:
Originally Posted by plnyyanks
Another important thing to mention here is that this year's volunteer training very heavily emphasized only running the MatchMaker algorithm once and only once. And if you ran it a second time, you had to explain your reasoning on Skype. The reason for this policy is to avoid the exact kinds of bias we're discussing - because randomness is the fairest decider of them all.
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First I disagree with the assertion that randomness is the fairest decider, especially when we never get to a full probability distribution which would allow schedules to balance out over a one or even several regionals. Second, these algorithms are in fact not completely random. They have inherent patterns that are difficult to erase.
I believe it would be simple add the bin constraint--I doubt that it would have to be run more than once. The only added step which is quite easy is to assign the teams to the separate bins.
As for leaving scheduling to the judgement calls of the officials, I think that's fraught with danger. For example, how should we have treated 5136 at CVR? They had made it to Einstein in 2014 yet they are only a 3rd year team. I think a transparent algorithm solves the problem the best.