I see we have a statistician amongst us!
Yes there's just too much variability year to year which is probably the goal of FIRST to keep everyone guessing or else it would be a free for all and there would be no challenges.
As for the teams that are statistically successful - they have the technology, experience, resources and definitely luck on their sides.
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Xerox Sr. Systems Engineer
Other jobs: Retired X-CATS Team Leader, Inaugural FLR MC and plain ol' nice guy
Team# 191 X-CATS - Est.1992 (www.x-cats.org)
"We don't just build robots we build people..."