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Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
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.
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The tone of your post suggests that you are getting defensive. I did not mean to offend anyone or insinuate that the success of the beta testers was soley due to being a beta tester.
However,
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Originally Posted by Chris is me
Neither my team nor any other beta test team got a significant head start last year.
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The above quote does not take into account that the beta testers had 6 weeks of familiarity with the cRIO and thus did not have to learn the basics from scratch just before build season. Remember: many rookie teams may not know where the FIRST forums are ... nevermind CD.
Also, suggesting that reading a blog or post about how something is done is as good as getting your hands on it and experimenting is just not true. You cannot easily replace first hand knowledge with third hand knowledge, it just doesn't translate that well ... especially with technical nuances.
Additionally,
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
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
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By your own admission, the beta testers were very skilled. By contrast, many of the teams that needed extra time with the cRIO (rookies, small teams, teams without software mentors) were not afforded the time.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
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.
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Please state where I made this claim.
All I claimed is that they recieved a significant advantage over non-beta teams.
As always, the Above is JMHO.