Folks,
What with all the brain power represented by FIRST and the participants in this thread, I am surprised at the number of posts that "talk" past one another or that discuss some off-topic aspect of a broader subject.
And, in particular I am surprised that no one other than Ike (
here ) has brought up the rock-bottom, essential nub of this discussion (if I missed anyone else I'm sorry). I believe that asking if something is "fair" is a 100% incomplete and ill-formed question. I'll assert that there is no such thing as something being "fair" without additional qualification.
Things/situations/actions/rules are only fair
in some sense. Giving two children equal numbers of cookies is fair in the sense of giving everyone the same sized treat. Giving children equal numbers of cookies might be unfair in the sense that one child was given all the cookies with the most chocolate chips. Giving two children equal numbers of green beans is unfair in the sense of not recognizing that one is extremely hungry and malnourished and the other is well-fed. Etc.
This is a topic that comes up all the time in some branches of math and philosophy.
My suggestion to skippy is this:
- Assert/define the team characteristics or accomplishments that you think should FIRST should reward and what you think FIRST wants the outcome of the individual regionals and the total regional process to be.
- Describe the parts of the rules that you agree properly use those characteristics to increase the expected value of a team's reward; and
- Describe the parts of the rules that you think improperly use teams' other characteristics to increase the expected value of the teams' rewards.
- Point out that you think the rules are unfair in the sense of rewarding teams for ___ and remind everyone that you think FIRST does not intend to reward teams for ___.
- You are now able to argue/assert that the rules are not fair in the sense that they reward ___.
If you can pose your question in this manner, we can have a debate that just might stay on topic
and just might reach a useful conclusion.
I suspect that much of that debate will focus on whether or not you properly express the team characteristics that FIRST should reward, and whether you (or anyone) can properly express what the outcomes of individual regionals and the total regional process should reward/recognize. The part of the debate that touches on whether the rules are fair in the sense of measuring what they should measure and rewarding teams that maximize what the rules measure will be the easier part of the discussion.
Blake