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Unread 14-04-2005, 18:37
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Re: How do you rank?

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeepWater
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?
While at UCF and Palmetto, we generated this data Real Time. After each match we'd add the data to the db, and then refresh the page to see the new results. One regional takes a little less than a minute to compute. You can generate results real time for multiple regionals on the site by selecting them on the right. 2 regionals takes a little over a minute. 8 Regionals is on the order of 4-5 minutes, 19 regionals takes 30 minutes. As you add more teams it increases the data hash exponentially and thus takes much longer. 50 teams isn't too bad, 700 is a little out rageous

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeepWater
2) How is the rank determined between teams with equal relative power rankings determined?
This is quite rare with so much unique data per team, but in the even that they are exactly the same, it sorts by team number.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeepWater
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?
This is not difficult at all. I have the mechanism in place just hadn't generated the pages yet. With the multiple requests for this, I think I'll have to do that soon

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeepWater
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.
This would be real hard to do real time, since the data changes dramatically each match, even when your team isn't even competing. But with static data like previous regionals, I should be able to store that data and output it .. would the "Relative Power" value be the number you'd like, or would the team rank be more appropriate?

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeepWater
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.
I was trying to figure out a good algorithm to do this, haven't thought through it just yet.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeepWater
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.
This data must be cached somewhere in the program, it'd just be a matter of figuring it out. Maybe I should compute the win/loss percentage per regional and average margin of victory then run each regional through the program as if they were individual teams. That might have some interesting metrics

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeepWater
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.
Myself and the TechTigers whole-heartedly agree with this. Data is data, and statistics can be very misleading. As a Statistics minor in college, I spent much time analyzing data and recognizing falsehoods in the nature of the data. This is provided as a fun way to "measure" teams, but it is the unpredictable nature of the game that makes it fun to do this. FIRST does a wonderful job a leveling the playing fields with the game design and alliances. The only thing statistics are good for is predicting the past (and even that is arguable). We wish the best of luck to all teams at Atlanta, and are anxious to meet with you all there,

-Allen
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