[archiver]

Posted by ChrisH at 04/09/2001 3:14 PM EST


Engineer on team #330, Beach 'Bots, from Hope Chapel Academy and NASA JPL, J & F Machine, Raytheon, et al.


In Reply to: Some other thoughts, and observations
Posted by Jason Rudolph on 04/08/2001 9:03 PM EST:




: Overall, I think nationals this year was fantastic, with the exception of all the rain on thursday, but hey, all you guys need to experience a REAL Florida rainstorm at least once in your lives. The game turned out GREAT, and in contrast to regionals, the communication between teams on stage seemed to go MUCH smoother.

I don't know which regionals you went to, but they must have been really chaotic. Our operators reported that they had much more trouble negotiating strategy at Nationals than at either of the West Coast regionals.

Interestingly, we got our best scores with the most flexible partners(in terms of attitude), who were generally also lower seeds. The lower seeds also tended to be more honest about their abilities (or lack thereof).

I know because I was one of the ones who went around talking to ALL of the teams in our group before we were called up. Before that, I'd check the data bases as to what the teams had done previously.

I won't say that teams lied, but what they claimed they could do often wasn't reflected in the databases. Our operators recieved special notes about that. We didn't care what a team's score or standing was, we wanted to know what they had attempted and what they successfully achieved.

Note these were general trends. I can think of specific examples of exceptions to each general statement. But a trend that's 75% correct is still a trend.

Chris Husmann
Team 330 the Beach'Bots