Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Anderson
The programmer of the 2007 match algorithm believed the same thing. Whether or not it is correct doesn't matter much to the results of implementing that belief: with fewer than about 60 teams at an event, the number of times a given team plays with or against a specific other team skyrockets. This is exactly what you're trying to avoid, isn't it?
Unless you have an extraordinarily large pool of teams to draw from, "all of the other constraints" conspire to cluster teams into essentially the same groupings over and over again. What problem were you trying to solve again?
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No, we're not trying to avoid playing with the same teams repeatedly. We're trying to avoid matches in which one alliance is over strong vs the other simply due to the nature of the composition. We should not have been paired with 254 or 1671 AT ALL at CVR, yet we played with both of them. Excluding such pairings is more imperative than playing with as many teams as possible.
Another option to use a sliding scale of point ratings for each team, and ensure that each alliance has a total that exceeds a minimum value. That would allow for more flexibility in alliance composition. Again an imperative to ensure that every alliance has a minimum level of competence. The flip side of having overly strong alliances is less important if each alliance surpasses a minimum.
I'm interested in what the problem was with the 2007 schedule? What criteria were they using?
BTW, I think it's interesting to see that it's only the NFL that uses strength of schedule. The other leagues have so many games (80+) that each team is able to play each other multiple times. (But I will note that the NBA changed its playoff qualification instead as a means of correcting a regional misbalance in schedule strength.) The NFL season is more akin to FRC with relatively few matches compared to the number of competitors.