[Ed Law]

I did an interesting study. A lot of people from Michigan and outside of Michigan who watched the matches of the Michigan State Championship have made comments like
1) overall high performance and evenness of the teams in the matches
2) depth of the teams based on the fact that many good teams did not get into elimination round
3) very exciting to watch because there are very few lopsided matches
4) tougher than world championship and comparable to IRI

Team 2834 was at the State Championship and played in the elimination round so we have first hand experience.

I am not expressing my opionion whether the Michigan district and state championship model is good or not or whether other parts of the country or the world championship should adopt the model that robots need to qualify and teams who won rookie all-star award can have their robot compete. Some people may not like what I am showing below. I am just reporting on numbers so please don't shoot the messenger.

I overlayed the Michigan teams who made it to the State Championship with their OPR and CCWM before the State Championship. I "stretched" it horizontally to match the 87 teams in each division. You can see that in the attached file. This is my finding.
1) In general, Michigan teams are not stronger in OPR and CCWM than any of the divisions. The average OPR is 21.9 and CCWM is 6.4 and they are right in between the 4 championship divisions.
2) The upper half of the teams in the MI State Championship are actually lower than all the divisions meaning the good teams in the championship are better than the good teams in Michigan teams overall.
3) The lower half of the teams in the MI State Championship are much higher than all 4 championship divisions which is not surprising since robots have to qualify. This could explain why the MI State Championship seems to have higher performance because of the relative evenness of the teams. This could be an argument for the MI State Championship model if you want it to be more exciting.

What do you think?

Ed