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It might be a reasonable assumption, but it's not proof.
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very true, I just made the comment trying to be silly...
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Sure, the "real" curve might look slightly different from the idealized one you show, but the concept behind it doesn't get changed
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The thing that got us thinking was
this Ted lecture.
It was a subject we were thinking about when we were trying to develop FIRSTsteps, communication, coordination, collaboration. There are all sorts of natural phenomena that uses this math.
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I. too, wonder if FIRST has done this kind of analysis?
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Maybe yes, maybe no. If not it has probably been in the back of a lot of peoples minds but never really put on paper. I say that simply because of the effort to drill out the data. And FIRST being a really busy place may not have had time ? Who knows.
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What jumped out at me from this is it can be used as a means of deciding where to focus efforts towards recruiting new teams.
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Very true and I think there are multiple things being said.
a) where to focus resources for team startup
b) resolving the 'unpleasantness' between FRC / FTC / VRC. There is a relationship between all groups. Movement in one group causes movements in all groups. Ask Coke and Pepsi. Advertise more Coke, and both Coke and Pepsi sales increase.
c) identifying a suitable metric of 'success'. If you doubled the target numbers on the spreadsheet you would have a team in every school.
d) It helps with the problem of trying to create some realistic budget numbers for policy makers.
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I'd also be interested in an analysis of why some areas are so very different from others.
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speculating yet again, I'm guessing it's a history lesson, something along what might be described by James Burke
Connections - history interacting as a web of social relationships.
Dean and Woodie and the rest knew someone that went home and started some teams and it organically grew based on personal relationships and professional networking. Folks keep passing it forward. Kinda like how some Georgia folks are reaching into Tennessee right now.
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And, is a state the proper geographic delineation?
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It is simply a way to perform assessment. If the analysis is good enough for us all to do our job then it probably doesn't matter. It is mostly driven by the ease of getting institutionally produced reliable data.
Ed