[archiver]

Posted by Daniel, Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Henry M Gunn Senior High School and NASA Ames.

Posted on 5/5/99 6:02 PM MST


In Reply to: Re: Or we could try the easy way... posted by P.J. Baker on 5/5/99 10:42 AM MST:



Thoughts? Yup. Here goes...


: Play a round robinish tournament with the smaller group.

Is that really better than just increasing the amount of Q's? I see that your method would help, but I still think more matches would be more effective. Besides, I personally would rather have more matches anyway! I think the three day national competition is bursting at the seams. Give 'em a fourth!


: Give a 'lucky' team one 540 point win and 5, 100 point losses (a very good losing score). Their average QP is 353, decent but below this year's top 16 (We were 14th with about a 460 average).

I see your point, but how many teams lose matches with 100 points? I would bet at least three out of five of those 100 point rounds would be a win, boosting that average QP to 453. That's just about where you guys were at. 100 points is not a bad enough score to make the assumption that it would be a loss, it's really not a bad score at all.

Just to make it a little clearer, say a team gets lucky for two matches. One 540 and one around 380. Both are very good scores. With just those two scores ALONE, if we average in zeros for the other 4 matches, they have the same 460 that you had. And should a team that gets zeros really be in the finals?


: There has been a lot of discussion about defense not being rewarded in the seeding rounds. This is obviously true, but ... FIRST gave us all the same set of rules on day one. It was obvious then that they wanted to reward scoring in matches.

Very true. However, I think you may have misinterpreted what I was saying. I am not griping about how unfair it was that my 'bot didn't get in the top 16. I never expected to. I counted on getting picked. I just think maybe it was a mistake for FIRST to value high scores so much. In my opinion, defense is a very valuable aspect of sports and if FIRST wants to be sport-like, they should value defense just as they do offence. Why not reward both? Seed on wins and use QMs as tie breakers! High scores win matches just as well as defense does. It allows for more flexible playing strategy. Besides, I don't agree that defense isn't as exciting as high scores. I was sitting on the edge of my seat when I saw Wildstang's basket being held down...


Any of this making sense?
-Daniel