Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur
My reasoning for my belief that beta teams have an advantage is based on 'First hand experiance' vs. '3rd hand experiance'.
How many times have you tried to repeat an experiance to someone, only to end up saying "you had to be there". This is part of human nature and the fact that our systems for communication (language, etc) are flawed by our own paradiems (sp?).
Many things that I do naturally (and think nothing of it), others may never do (or conceive of doing). Because of this I may not transmit that information acccurately, properly, or even at all. However, if the others had 'hands on' training then they might have picked up on those small details.
Let me ask you a couple of question:
How many beta teams screwed up setting up the cRIO (downloading, etc) when they got theirs for competition? Probably none since they already had done it previously and knew where the mistakes were.
How many rookie teams screwed up setting up their cRIO (downloading, etcc) when they got theirs? If you read the threads here on CD, there were quite a few ... and those were the ones that knew about CD.
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Your insinuation that somehow the beta teams had a leg up on the competition because they had a leg up on the control system is a pointless conversation to have. Teams chosen for beta testing were chosen because they would have a leg up to begin with. This may seem counter intuitive, giving the teams that would have succeeded anyway and forcing the teams to help other teams through the disclosure agreement made sense.
The data you are asking is quite easy for Michigan, for example, 67 WAS a beta test team. However, correlating their early experience with the control system to their success this year is simply impossible. In the real world there are too many variables from year to year to say that any one factor contributed to a given team's success. Additionally your data will be skewed because teams were chosen because they had demonstrated that they were familiar with how to build a robot and run a FIRST team. Naturally these teams will be ones that have a marked history of winning events. To make a claim that a team that had a history of winning events would not have won events had they not had the benefit of beta testing the control system is absurd.