Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri
I propose this:
- Assign all teams a "regional success score". 1 point for a top 8 seed, 3 points for a regional finalist, 5 points for a regional win.
- Rank all teams based on this score. If teams have the same score, randomize them within this subset.
- Using the current list ranked "good" to "not so good", assign teams into divisions using the 1,2,3,4 drag and drop method, like previous years.
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I
really disagree with this - this system effectively punishes teams for doing well at their regionals, and raises the spectre of hyper-competitive teams getting into the Championship by first-come, first-serve (instead of actually qualifying) and then deliberately not doing well at their regionals to get a more favourable spot in Atlanta. (Not saying anybody would do this, but it's still not the sort of thing one wants to encourage.)
On the other hand, if our hypothetical hyper-competitive team doesn't register early enough to get into the Championship, they might be encouraged to go for Chairman's or Engineering Inspiration so they don't 'have' to win a regional
I disagree with any sort of attempted match-balancing at all (either number- or merit-based); you'll certainly get imbalanced blowouts either way (e.g. match 15 in Toronto, 188-1114-1680 vs. 519-1353-1564, 338 to 4), and with some sort of balancing system I think teams get more upset because they have something concrete to be angry at (an imperfect balancing system) as opposed to plain old luck of the draw. Also, I can't think of any other competition which tries to artificially balance matches - if it truly led to more exciting matches, one would think that it would have been done before.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Lucas
I suggest pregenerating optimized random matrices (ie check all combinations) with constraints for cycle time for every combination of number of teams at a regional and reasonable number of matches. Then randomize the team list to matrix spots and drop them in the corresponding spots in the matrix.
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This is what I've been advocating for a while. 'Check all combinations' is a LOT of combinations, though. I tried to set up match scheduling as a binary programming problem once - effectively an optimized way of checking all combinations - and there are simply too many to check. I think you'll always need some sort of algorithm to generate schedules, but at least if they're pre-generated everyone can see them ahead of time and submit better ones of their own if they want.