[archiver]

Posted by P.J. Baker.

Engineer on team #177, Bobcat Robotics, from South Windsor High School and International Fuel Cells.

Posted on 8/31/99 10:43 AM MST


In Reply to: statistical bonus points posted by Joe Johnson on 8/30/99 7:33 PM MST:



Joe,

How many digits of precision on the # of std. devs.? With tenths ot hundredths, it would probably work o.k. Whole numbers only would create an artificial difference between teams that were just one side or the other of the standar dev.

I think that you are right on the money with your prediction of what would happen if there was an incentive to keep your opponents from scoring any points in the seeding rounds. Weak teams would be punished. There would be lots of broken bots in the seeding rounds, leading to many hurt feelings.

On this discussion in general, I would like to make the following comment:
The scoring system devised by FIRST, whatever it may be, is part of the design challenge that we are given. As long as the challenge is one that can be solved by almost everyone, not just the teams endowed with the most resources, the scoring system is inherently fair. We all made decisions about our robot designs after the rules of the game were released this year. Some of us decided that a defensive robot was the way to go, even if it was clear from the rules that this would make it difficult to seed high. Some of us used drive systems that were developed in the off season that were not easily adaptable to this year's puck climbing requirement, and some built robots that could both score and play defense (Ace's High comes to mind). Robots from all three classes did very well at the competitions this year. If we want to ask FIRST for a contest that is more balanced between offense and defense, that is one thing, but I think that as long as FIRST does not change the scoring rules after the design cycle is started, they should be judged as fair.