[EricH]

Originally Posted by Monochron

It's hard to imagine that anyone involved in process is thinking "boy I hope I never have to double check our methods and assumption with the other people involved in California FRC".

I think the point is more:

We need to remove assumptions as much as possible. We need more data. But where assumptions are necessary, we need to act on those as soon as possible as far as finding out if they're right or wrong.

What looks really good on paper may or may not actually look really good in practice, and what works in practice is rather more likely to actually work on paper, though maybe not as well in theory as what looks good on paper. Remember that ideal physics problems take place in frictionless vacuums, while real physics has to deal with too much (or too little) friction with all contacting surfaces.

One of the best "rookie" events that I've heard about (or attended) was the O.C. Regional. Kind of helped that they'd eliminated a lot of the assumptions the previous fall at an offseason event, by testing the regional layout--and that test had learned from the same event the previous fall. Sure, there were some new elements to work around--but at the same time, dealing with 5 assumptions can generally beat dealing with 10, 20, or 50!