[Rick TYler]

How many of you have read the paper describing the mathematics and reasoning algorithm of this year's new match scheduling software? You can read it here: http://www.idleloop.com/matchmaker/. For the record, this software was written (for free) by two mentors from team 1318, and was meant to address the criticisms from past years. In fact Tom and Cathy wrote it because they despised some of the "we seem to have the same partners in every match" problems. It seems to have fixed that. What I'm guessing might be missing in the algorithm is the assumption that "team numbers determine robot quality." The algorithm is trying to minimize the number of times a given team sees another specific team as an opponent or alliance partner, to make sure the red/blue alliance experience is close to 50-50, to smooth out match separation (to assure no back-to-back matches), and what Cathy and Tom call "round uniformity." Making sure the team numbers are smoothly distributed was not a factor in the algorithm.

If you have suggestions why not email Tom and Cathy at the address on their Website? Adding a factor for "balanced mix of rookies and older teams" would probably not be impossible, and going to someone who can fix the problem would probably be more productive than complaining on CD. For what it's worth, the current match scheduler looks to me like it produces much better results than older solutions. I also think someone ought to thank Cathy and Tom for their contribution of this software.