Red Advantage ?

[Krystine T.]

Does the Red alliance have an advantage over the Blue?

George Williams (60) asked my dad if he had noticed that the red alliance had an advantage over the blue in the finals at the Sacramento Regional. He went on to say that he noticed blue only won two matches during the finals at that regional. George’s thought was that the red tetras had better visual perception than the blue tetras. My dad and I decided to put a spreadsheet together to determine if this might be true. We took the final's match results from each regional that FIRST posted on their website. Not all of the results were posted, so we used the data that was available as of the evening of 3-12-05 6:00 pm MST. We put the data into our spreadsheet to analyze it. We did notice that there are discrepancies in the team numbers and we can only assume that the scores are correct. Based on this information it looks as though the red alliance does have at least an 18% advantage over the blue alliance.

If anyone has new or corrected data please send it to me at Krystinet@hotmail.com. I will continue to update the spreadsheet as more data becomes available.

--Krystine Thoroughman

[Simon Strauss]

that makes sense since red is a warm color(see i payed attention in art class) it stands out more than blue

[Joe Ross]

Is it possible the "advantage" is because the higher seed is generally red?


Edit:
In the first round, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th seeds are red, and the 5th, 6th 7th and 8th seeds are blue. In the semi-finals, the 1st and 2nd seeds are red (or the 7th or 8th seed if there was an upset), etc.

[Simon Strauss]

i think its just a matter of how well the eye can spot certain colors from far distances, and line up their robots with it.

[Shu Song]

Agrees with Joe Ross.

As coach for our drive team, I certainly didn't notice any perceivable difference between the two sides, save the giant real time scoring system(but it wasn't working at all during FLR). Perpahs you should compile all scores from regionals and then analyzed them for descrepancies.

[Yan Wang]

Pulling out my calculator and doing a quick 1-proportion z-test, if the true proportion of red wins is 50%, then this observed proportion of 62% would occur 0.7% of the time. Thus, we can conclude that something is up.

I agree that red alliances are often higher seeded alliances and may play a large part.

As a driver and member of a team whose color is red, I prefer red to blue.

[Kevin Sevcik]

I'll agree with Joe. If this discrepency is this large in just the quals, then it might mean something, but the elims are obviously not a truly random sample. I think you'd need a bit large sample size as well to actually conclude something.

[Yan Wang]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I'll agree with Joe. If this discrepency is this large in just the quals, then it might mean something, but the elims are obviously not a truly random sample. I think you'd need a bit large sample size as well to actually conclude something.

A bigger sample does not make it any more random. This cluster sample of elimination matches is (and can be) assumed to be representative of all elimination matches.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Yan Wang

A bigger sample does not make it any more random. This cluster sample of elimination matches is (and can be) assumed to be representative of all elimination matches.

But Kevin's point is that the choice of colors in the eliminations is not random. All that has been proven is that higher seeds have an advantage in the elims, not that a certain color has an advantage.

[Btower]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

But Kevin's point is that the choice of colors in the eliminations is not random. All that has been proven is that higher seeds have an advantage in the elims, not that a certain color has an advantage.

You and Kevin are correct, the highest seeded alliance is always placed in the red zone by the computer. In fact, its a great communist conspiracy to mold the mind of teenagers into equating Reds with winners. (They tried with baseball but this lost effectiviness decades ago). Interestingly enough, at GLR in the QF's Blue won 50% including the most improbable Alliance 1 vs 8.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Btower

In fact, its a great communist conspiracy to mold the mind of teenagers into equating Reds with winners.

No, it's a Republican conspiracy.

[DDRAngelKurumi]

But at portland, none of the bots were designed to pick up color tets during atonomous... so there really is no advantage there...

[pakrat]

where was the screen at the regional in question?? I know at GLR it was really easy for one alliance to see the screen, and the other had to turn around. Just a random observation.

[Validius]

all the matches that we won in GLR were on read team.

I watched peachtree regional for like 45 minuts and i never saw blue win.....

[irishninja]

I've also been told that lower team numbers are generally placed on the red alliance. I'm not saying rookie teams are bad, I'm saying that those of us who have been doing it longer have more experience, and hopefully more knowledge.