Match Scheduling Algorithm Competition

[AdamHeard]

FIRST has no valid way of ranking teams, and thus the only fair way to do selections is randomly. Factoring age or some arbitrary rank will never be fair.

Originally Posted by Billfred

Best I can tell from rooting through their site, this particular challenge is their championship round and is thus invite-only.

The challenge has seven quality metrics they're trying to minimize (with each metric carrying its own definable weight):

-Difference in average team age on each alliance between the two alliances
-Difference in average rank of a team (defined from 1 to 10 in the challenge, where 1 is rookie and 10 is reigning champion) between the two alliances
-Unique partners
-Unique opponents
-Time between matches (more is better)
-Assignment to red or blue
-Position in player station

If FIRST took the current match assignment criteria (as defined in The Tournament--PDF link) and put the age and (reasonably-calculated) rank criteria in beneath the unique opponent/partner criteria, then it could reduce the number of "oh-crap-we-play-against-Beatty-AND-Simbots-this-match?!" rounds--at that point, the algorithm is likely to switch one of them to your alliance (especially at Championship, where they'd have the benefit of regular-season data).

TLDR: This could evolve into a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what weight you put on the factors.