Strongest regional competitions

[snoman]

alright all your data people. What do you feel are the top 20 strongest / toughest regional competitions .. what are the weakest

[Hallry]

Is this what you're looking for?

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Is this what you're looking for?

I don't think BBQ is a very good stat to use to measure strength of a regional. Blue Banners can be won as being a 3rd robot. (2815 famously won 2 in a year as the 3rd robot). I think a combination of OPR, consistency of performance, and the event's scores compared to the mean (or median) of the entire season would shine more light on which regional would be more competitive.

Also off the top of my head, some regionals with good rosters:

Arkansas
Dallas
Silicon Valley

[mwmac]

Since these threads discussing "most competitive" or "strongest" or "toughest" events are inquiring about robot performance and BBQ or Sauce has been pointed to as the appropriate performance metric I have been curious as to why a judged award (Chairman's) should be included in the conversation. I think it would be more insightful to examine the data for event champions/winners normalized like a batting average for the number of events entered in a team's history.

[JB987]

I can't remember a week one as loaded as Dallas is this year...everyone has their work cut out for them for sure.

[cmrnpizzo14]

Finger Lakes.

Not the most star studded of line-ups but every single team is solid. 1511, 340, 229, 191, 1507, 1126.... Feel free to add on to this, the Rochester area is incredible.

Most notable moment: 1 tube hang or minibot away from beating 2056/217 in 2011.

[Arpan]

To account for competitiveness in terms of the robot competition alone (no other awards), I propose a new ranking system : WORldS last yEar ranking, or WORSE. (I really wanted that acronym.)

Since comparing teams relevant to their region is generally not going to tell you which region is strongest, we can instead use the ranking of the teams at the last world championships. Each team that attended worlds is given a score equivalent to (100- division ranking from last year).

This isn't perfect as great teams can miss worlds and, as we all know, the rankings can be messed up - but I think it'll work better than BBQ.

Anyone with access to the data and better computer skills than me want to try it?

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by Arpan

To account for competitiveness in terms of the robot competition alone (no other awards), I propose a new ranking system : WORldS last yEar ranking, or WORSE. (I really wanted that acronym.)

Since comparing teams relevant to their region is generally not going to tell you which region is strongest, we can instead use the ranking of the teams at the last world championships. Each team that attended worlds is given a score equivalent to (100- division ranking from last year).

This isn't perfect as great teams can miss worlds and, as we all know, the rankings can be messed up - but I think it'll work better than BBQ.

Anyone with access to the data and better computer skills than me want to try it?

Interesting idea. Although, since a regional only sends about 6 teams to CMP each year, it may not be as representative of the entire regional as BBQ (not saying that BBQ is the best metric by any means). The finalists, for example, would have no effect on this system, because they didn't attend champs, even if they lost by a single point. Also, teams who don't regularly attend specific out of state events may skew the rankings in certain regionals.

Personally, I want to see some kind of standardized z-score system that takes last year's OPRs of events and compares them with the mean score of that week of competition. Of course, all the qualms of OPR would apply, but I think it's a little more numerical and detailed compared to BBQ, and takes rankings to a minimal factor.

[saikiranra]

Maybe we should use a standardized OPR, where we give teams an OPR percentage per year, based on their OPR divided by the max OPR for the season/week. We can average the percentages out to give a quantitative estimate of how well one team does against the other teams that year. This should also account for teams that do abnormally good/bad.

I feel like WORSE and BBQ won't give a representative ranking, because, like mentioned, teams who almost won will be ignored.

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

Personally, I want to see some kind of standardized z-score system that takes last year's OPRs of events and compares them with the mean score of that week of competition. Of course, all the qualms of OPR would apply, but I think it's a little more numerical and detailed compared to BBQ, and takes rankings to a minimal factor.

Before anybody allows themselves to read the following and experience angst over the obvious shortcomings of using imperfect past metrics to evaluate a team's performance, remember the following: this is just for fun.

I've been toying with concepts like this in my head as well. I'd like to create an index that tries to compare performance at different events more fairly, similar to the way baseball stats can adjust for things like park effects, league effects, different levels of offense in different years, and so on.

Rather than average OPR for the event, for evaluating replacement level I'd probably favor something like average OPR of teams 20-28 on the OPR list. And for evaluating the difficulty of winning the event, I'd probably look at the average OPR of the top 4-8 teams, or maybe even just the top 2-3.

It depends what one is looking for. If you want to know how hard an event is to WIN, then you mainly need to look at the strength of the top two teams other than your own team to know how high the bar is. If you want to gauge how hard it is to make the semifinals, on the other hand, you're probably looking at the strength of the top 10 or so teams, because you want to be in that group to have a good shot at getting on the top 5 or so alliances and avoid being the underdog in the quarterfinals.

I'm just spitballing here, but I think it might make sense to weight the value of an event win by average of the top ~3 teams, compared to the average of the top ~3 across ALL events. Then assign more or less value to a win based on how the event stacks up. And that's for 1st and 2nd robots on the alliance - I'd probably want to do something different for the 2nd pick or a backup robot. For finalists (robots 1+2) I'm probably looking at the average of robots ~3-5 compared to that average for all events. And so on. This has issues and it's a loose idea in my mind so far, but I think that would provide a bit more of a basis for comparing a team's win at Event A to another team's semifinalist finish at Event B.

[Link07]

MAR Hatboro-Horsham looks to once again be stacked, with a lineup that includes all previous MAR champions, a few of which have made mutliple Einstein appearances in the last few years, and a good number of MAR's biggest players

[rlowe61]

This is an interesting topic that can be filled with a lot of opinion.
To look at a team’s previous rankings is a start, but one must know the game before you can say the competition will be harder at one location rather than another. Also looking at an overall OPR ranking, is not always a complete understanding of a team. How many members graduated, how strong their student base is, did they lose/gain any mentors that would affect the team. All of these are determining factors in the overall strength of a particular team.
Also, remember that if you look at the competition level of a team that attends multiple events, that team gets better, so an event later in the year, with many teams that have already competed will likely be a harder event. An example of that is to look at previous years Alamo and Lonestar events. Of these competitions many of the same teams compete, it doesn’t matter which was earlier than the other, the second event is a tougher event. There are many pairs of events similar to this example around the country.
I love that everyone is already looking at the competition, but without knowing the game it is a difficult call. If the game is something that no one has seen, how can you tell how a team will do? Maybe a Rooky Team will step up and design the ultimate robot that can accomplish everything the game allows….there are a lot of unknowns at this time and until everyone has competed in this year’s game who knows.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by rlowe61

This is an interesting topic that can be filled with a lot of opinion.
To look at a team’s previous rankings is a start, but one must know the game before you can say the competition will be harder at one location rather than another. Also looking at an overall OPR ranking, is not always a complete understanding of a team. How many members graduated, how strong their student base is, did they lose/gain any mentors that would affect the team. All of these are determining factors in the overall strength of a particular team.
Also, remember that if you look at the competition level of a team that attends multiple events, that team gets better, so an event later in the year, with many teams that have already competed will likely be a harder event. An example of that is to look at previous years Alamo and Lonestar events. Of these competitions many of the same teams compete, it doesn’t matter which was earlier than the other, the second event is a tougher event. There are many pairs of events similar to this example around the country.
I love that everyone is already looking at the competition, but without knowing the game it is a difficult call. If the game is something that no one has seen, how can you tell how a team will do? Maybe a Rooky Team will step up and design the ultimate robot that can accomplish everything the game allows….there are a lot of unknowns at this time and until everyone has competed in this year’s game who knows.

You've just described what I hate the most about the great sport of college football: pre-season rankings. In the world of college football, media outlets try to assign rankings before the season starts to generate hype, the media $$$, and show their perceptions of which teams are strong. Most of the times, the end of year rankings are completely different from the preseason rankings.

While i expect most FRC teams to be more stable than college football programs, all we can do before these regionals play is the same thing the media does before the college football teams play: Speculate, hype, and try to use previous year's stats to justify our predictions.

However, i'd say FRC can be more predictable than football 9 times out of 10

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

You've just described what I hate the most about the great sport of college football: pre-season rankings. In the world of college football, media outlets try to assign rankings before the season starts to generate hype, the media $$$, and show their perceptions of which teams are strong. Most of the times, the end of year rankings are completely different from the preseason rankings.

AP Poll Preseason top 5 teams:
Florida State
Alabama
Oregon
Oklahoma
Ohio State

AP Poll Week 16 top 5 teams:
Alabama
Florida State
Oregon
Baylor
Ohio State

So the AP Poll went from Oklahoma being #4 to unranked, but other than that, the preseason polls seemed to do a pretty decent job. Four of the preseason top five were still in the top five at the end.

So sure, you can't account for every factor (like student, mentor and sponsor loss), but preseason predictions can still do a fairly decent job. Good teams tend to be good from year to year. What are the chances that every team at a regional will be worse than the year before? Pretty slim. Some teams will get worse, but others will get better.


The Waterloo regional will be one of the more competitive ones next year. Only two of the teams attending were not in eliminations at any event last year.

EDIT: I decided to expand on the method of ranking events by % of teams in elims at their first event the previous year. It is slated more to areas with smaller event sizes the previous year (like PNW). This probably makes it a poor indicator of regional competitiveness. However, it still gives insights, especially within areas of similar event sizes. For example, Hatboro is ranked much higher than other MAR districts.
Here are the results:

PNWMt.Vernon				80.65%
PNWAuburnMountainview		        78.13%
PNWWilsonville				71.88%
PNWAuburn				68.75%
PNWWestValley				68.00%
Waterloo				67.86%
MARHatboro-Horsham			66.67%
NEPineTree				66.67%
PNWPhilomathPeak			66.67%
MARMt.Olive				65.79%
Hawaii				        65.71%
PNWOregonCity				65.63%
PNWCentralWashingtonUniversity          65.63%
MIHowell				64.86%
NewYorkTechValley			64.71%
NEPioneerValley				64.52%
PNWGlacierPeak				63.64%
MIWestMichigan				62.50%
PNWShorewood				62.50%
MIWaterford				61.54%
NENortheastern				60.00%
CentralValley				59.46%
NorthBay				59.46%
InlandEmpire				58.33%
NEWaterbury				57.58%
ArizonaEast				57.50%
ArkansasRockCity			56.90%
TorontoEast				56.52%
MIWoodhaven				56.25%
NEUMass-Dartmouth			56.00%
CentralIllinois				55.26%
MARBridgewater-Raritan		        55.26%
Ventura				        55.17%
NEUNH				        55.00%
TorontoCentral				54.76%
MARNorthBrunswick		        54.55%
Utah				        53.85%
INPerryMeridian				52.78%
NERhodeIsland				52.78%
MICenterline				52.50%
Pittsburgh				52.00%
MexicoCity				51.22%
QueenCity				51.02%
NEGraniteState				50.00%
MARSpringsideChestnutHill		50.00%
MILivonia				50.00%
NEHartford				50.00%
WindsorEssexGreatLakes		        50.00%
ArizonaWest				50.00%
MIBedford				50.00%
SouthFlorida				49.06%
SiliconValley				49.06%
WesternCanada				48.39%
MITraverseCity				47.50%
MITroy				        47.22%
INPurdue				46.15%
MIKentwood				45.45%
LosAngeles				45.45%
HubCity				        45.45%
MARUpperDarby				44.12%
Wisconsin				43.86%
MIEscanaba				43.33%
MARSeneca				43.24%
Buckeye				        43.10%
GeorgiaSouthernClassic		        42.86%
Israel				        42.86%
St.Louis				42.86%
Colorado				41.67%
Chesapeake				41.38%
LasVegas				41.30%
Minnesota10000Lakes			41.27%
SBPLILongIsland			        41.18%
FingerLakes				40.54%
Montreal				40.43%
MISouthfield				40.00%
NEReading				40.00%
INKokomo				40.00%
MISt.Joseph				40.00%
GreaterDC				40.00%
MIGreatLakesBayRegion	                37.50%
Oklahoma				37.29%
MinnesotaNorthStar		        36.67%
LakeSuperior				36.51%
Palmetto				36.36%
LoneStar				36.00%
Dallas				        35.42%
MIKetteringUniversity			35.00%
SanDiego				35.00%
KansasCity				34.62%
Midwest				        34.00%
NorthernLights				33.33%
Bayou				        32.73%
Alamo				        32.26%
MILansing				32.26%
Virginia				31.75%
MIStandish				31.25%
Orlando				        31.25%
SmokyMountains				30.77%
Peachtree				30.30%
MIGullLake				30.00%
Sacramento				29.55%
NorthCarolina				29.09%
NewYorkCity				25.76%
Australia				15.38%

[Nemo]

I don't think anybody is trying to look at the future in a fatalistic way. It's just fun to look at the different events and see how they compare. Any way of doing it has significant flaws, but it's still a fun exercise for some people.