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Re: How do you rank?
First, I would like to say thank you to Team 1251 for a job well done! The effort put into this ranking system is evident and the outcome is a very nice product useful to all teams. I have never been a big fan of the W-L-T/RP system that FIRST uses at the competitions especially with the RP based on the losing score/lowest un-penalized score. I have never really felt that it has been effective at accomplishing the objective. The FIRST system does not really seem to do a good job at ranking a team based on the strengths and weaknesses of the teams that you randomly play with and against. The system used in Team 1251’s relative power ranking does at least make an attempt at factoring in these strengths and weaknesses even if there is minor data entry errors discovered in team information. It is unfortunate that the raw data is unavailable from some of the early regional competitions. Without that we cannot really paint a complete picture. The FIRST W-L-T/RP system, however, is fairly straightforward and easy to compute rapidly at competitions. With this in mind I have a few thoughts, questions, and comments.
1) I am unclear as to if this relative power ranking system is (or can be) computed in near real time or is it something that takes quite a while to compute due to the interdependence of the power rankings of the teams at the competition. If a team was to supply corrected information for their particular team or even accurate data for a whole regional is it a big deal to update/compute the rankings after the data is entered? Once the “compute ranking” button is pressed are the results fairly immediate or is it more of a go get coffee come back and they are ready or more of a start it tonight before bed and they are ready in the morning kind of thing? Is this a system that could be used instead of the real time FIRST W-L-T/RP system for ranking teams at competition? Is it even appropriate?
2) How is the rank determined between teams with equal relative power rankings determined?
3) How difficult would it be to compute the same rankings (overall and per regional) without the elimination rounds being included? I would be interested to see how close this ranking system would be to the FIRST standings using the W-L-T/RP system after qualifications. Could it be a simple button on the web page to include or not include elimination rounds or even just compute the rankings both ways and display them side-by-side for comparison?
4) It would be helpful in the overall ranking page to also be able to see which regionals each team attended and the ranking points for that team at that regional in an additional column. For Example: 3, Archimedes, PINK, 233, 30, 3, 0, 97, FL=90 CO=99. This way you know Team 233 went to 2 regional competitions (FL and CO) and that they got relatively stronger. If this additional data were on the same overall page it would prevent a lot of jumping back and forth between pages.
5) The ability to sort by divisions at nationals might be helpful as well. This way you could get a short list of just the teams in your division.
6) With all the talk on CD about best, strongest, etc. regional competitions it seems like you have the data to compute a relative difficulty level of each of the regional competitions here as well. It would be an interesting statistical exercise.
Finally and most importantly, I want to say to all teams that numbers are just numbers. Don’t put too much faith in ANY ranking system. This ranking system at best points out which teams were relatively strong at the competitions they have already competed in. Use it as just that, an indication of what teams might be strong in Atlanta. Anything can and probably will happen in Atlanta. For those teams going to Atlanta please remember to have fun. Don’t get bogged down in the rankings. Relax, enjoy yourself, do the best you can, and remember that these are the things that make tomorrow’s memories.
Good luck to all teams going to Atlanta! With so many people traveling from so many far away places please travel safely.
Sorry for the long post!
-Chuck
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