Visualizing "coopertition" seeding points

[nrhinkle]

There's been a lot of discussion of the counter intuitive "coopertition bonus" scoring used in the 2010 competition. I agree that it's an odd approach for scoring a sports event, though I won't comment on whether or not I think it's fair to play what's being referred to as 6v0 matches.

We were having a bit of trouble wrapping our minds around the concept of the scoring algorithm. It is explained in the rule book, sections 9.3.3 - 9.3.6. To visualize and model various potential seeding outcomes of a match, we put together a quick LabVIEW VI to take the score and penalties for each alliance and display the corresponding raw score, coopertition bonus points and seeding scores.

Our regional (AutoDesk Oregon) is over, but for the subsequent weeks, your teams may find this useful for seeing a visual, interactive representation of how the scoring works. Some people I've shown it to did not understand how the seeding worked and why losing is sometimes better for your ranking than winning until I showed them this.

The full source code, as well as compiled executable, are available on our team website. If please give any feedback you have, and feel free to modify the VI. Let us know if you make any cool additions to it. This is a programming post, so please only add any commentary about the program itself. philosophical discussions about the fairness of the scoring system and strategies for using it should be held elsewhere. Thanks

Team blog post
Download VI
Download EXE (requires LabVIEW)
Download installer (for computers without LabVIEW; will install the compiled EXE and the redistributable LabVIEW runtime)

One of our team members is working on putting together an iPhone app version of this. We're hoping that it will be published in time for week 2 regionals. If you'd like to see any features added to it, post soon, since we'll be submitting it for review soon.