[Bongle]

More stats: This time about some teams. What has always interested me is what effect money has on teams, and how many teams attend multiple regionals.

Results:
# of active teams: 1107
# of teams attending a single regional: 806 (72.8%)
# of teams attending two regionals: 278 (25.1%)
# of teams attending three regionals: 23 (2.07%)

This was pretty surprising to me. Having always attended the greater toronto regional, it always seemed that every team but my own had already been to 2-3 other regionals that year. However, it seems that the VAST majority of teams only attend one regional per year.

Money has been another interest of mine. What effect does having a well-funded team have on general robot quality? I decided I could measure robot quality by looking at the average scores that a team got at their first regional. This would eliminate experience as a confounding factor, and would show nothing but what kind of quality the team was able to create during the build period. Would a richer team generally do better at their first regional than a poorer team? I could get an idea of how rich a team was by the # of regionals they were attending, since each regional represents quite a sum of money to raise (not only for entry, but for travel and accomodation as well). Combining these two measures, we get this:

Average score for all single-regional robots at their first regional: 27.3
Average score for all double-regional robots at their first regional: 30.8
Average score for all triple-regional robots at their first regional: 34.0

Win rate for all single-regional robots in their first regional: 45.5%
Win rate for all double-regional robots in their first regional: 53.9%
Win rate for all triple-regional robots in their first regional: 55.1%

So clearly the amount of regionals a team attends is correlated to their competitiveness. However, there are other things that cannot be ruled out. Teams that have enough money to compete at many regionals may have more members or more team spirit, which would explain why they have more money: a greater abililty to fundraise. It may not be the money that explains their greater ability, but rather their work ethic and sheer numbers that allows them to both raise money and build a great robot.

In short:
Option A:
-Money causes great robots

Option B:
-Team spirit and work ethic causes money
-Team spirit and work ethic causes great robots
-Money and great robots are unrelated

It's impossible to decide between option A and option B, because we don't know if team spirit and work ethic is also related to how many regionals a team attends. This is known as confounding. X may be related to Y, but there may also be a third factor Z which is not measurable, but is also related to both X and Y.

Here's an example of confounding: suicide rates (X) are higher near airports (Y). One might think that airports (X) cause suicides (Y). However, land near airports (Y) is worth less, and therefore people near airports will have less money (Z). Having less money (Z) is also related to suicide rates (X).