WE'VE DONE IT!

[Racer26]

What's also interesting is the growth rate based on some known checkpoints.

1992: <30 teams (28 IIRC)
1997: <200 teams (192)
2003: <800 teams (highest rookie was 1238, 787 attended events)
2006: <1200 teams (1978 highest rookie, 1133 attended events)
2009: <1700 teams (3122 highest rookie, 1677 attended events)
2011: <2100 teams (3883 highest rookie, 2065 attended events)

Seems to me like somewhere between 2003 and 2006 we had a huge leap in teams dumping the program, going from around 30% to around 45%

[Mark McLeod]

This list of all FRC teams ever might help your analysis
http://www.team358.org/files/frc_rec...Teams_Ever.xls

It'll tell you how many numbers were never assigned at all. There are 663 non-team holes.
Also, be aware that a number of teams have possessed multiple team numbers, so those defunct team numbers do not represent lost teams.
The pre-number teams are included in that list above along with later reincarnations, so they are counted too.

We're at 45% school district FRC participation on Long Island and we've lost about 11% of past district FRC teams, although some still come & go.
That also doesn't mean the school districts lost to FRC aren't doing FLL or FTC/Vex or some other STEM robotics program still.

[Marc P.]

Originally Posted by Dancin103

I remember as a kid thinking how high a team number like 834 was. Lol

I still have team 38's robot at home from 2000 with the IFI control system, where the Operator Interface has only 3 digits to display the team number, channel, and battery voltage. I remember when rookies were in the 500s, and team numbers over 1000 were just a far off dream.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

I'd rather see the numbers 1-1000 filled completely with their originally numbered teams...

Co-Signed.

I'd be much happier to see 10 sub-1000 numbered teams return than see 100 4000+ numbered teams join.

[Dancin103]

Originally Posted by Marc P.

I still have team 38's robot at home from 2000 with the IFI control system, where the Operator Interface has only 3 digits to display the team number, channel, and battery voltage. I remember when rookies were in the 500s, and team numbers over 1000 were just a far off dream.

We have some of those laying around somewhere too! Such great memories.

[1986titans]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

Ontario had 65 FRC teams in the 2011 season. 7 or so of these teams are at private schools that are not part of the 911 above. That means that only 6.3% of students in Ontario are even EXPOSED to the program, let alone get to participate.

I think it's a bit harder to figure out exposure to the program because school sizes vary drastically. Just something to think about.

[Kyler386]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

This list of all FRC teams ever might help your analysis
http://www.team358.org/files/frc_rec...Teams_Ever.xls

Wow ! I just downloaded the spreadsheet and took a look. It's quite an amazing feat for you guys to organize all of that information. When did you guys start working on this?

[Racer26]

Of course they do; however, there are also teams like 1305 (NNSRI) that are actually a conglomeration of schools in rural areas. Its not perfect math, I was merely giving an example of how we're nowhere close to 100% market penetration. Andrew posted an interesting counter-argument above, in that the logistics of operating the program the way its run now with that many schools involved are completely ludicrous.

Using Ontario as an example, if there were 911 teams in Ontario:

Of the 65 Ontario teams last year, 37 attended 1 regional, 23 attended 2 regionals, and 5 attended 3 regionals, for a total 98 event slots occupied by the 65 teams, and and average 1.507 event slots per team. Assuming this holds roughly true during growth:

911 Teams would need 1373 event slots, an average of 40 slots per event means we'd need 35 events. 35 events in a 6 week span, means an average of a little less than 6 events per week. Ontario would need 7 fields on its own. 7 fields and 35 venues.

Each event requires a number of volunteers. Lets conservatively put that number at 40. 40 volunteers times 6 concurrent events per week means 240 volunteers MINIMUM, and that's only valid if the same people volunteer every week. If every volunteer were unique at every event, we'd need 40x35= 1400 volunteers.

Those 35 events would send 35x6 = 210 teams to CMP. (This discounts repeat winners, which we all know happens, but even the minimum possible, assuming the same teams won each week would be 36, still ~10% of CMP's capacity, just for Ontario)

[davepowers]

Originally Posted by Marc P.

I still have team 38's robot at home from 2000 with the IFI control system, where the Operator Interface has only 3 digits to display the team number, channel, and battery voltage. I remember when rookies were in the 500s, and team numbers over 1000 were just a far off dream.

Throw up a picture?! I miss those OI's, they took 3 seconds to boot and connect, not 45-90.

-Dave

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

Of course they do; however, there are also teams like 1305 (NNSRI) that are actually a conglomeration of schools in rural areas. Its not perfect math, I was merely giving an example of how we're nowhere close to 100% market penetration. Andrew posted an interesting counter-argument above, in that the logistics of operating the program the way its run now with that many schools involved are completely ludicrous.

Using Ontario as an example, if there were 911 teams in Ontario:

Of the 65 Ontario teams last year, 37 attended 1 regional, 23 attended 2 regionals, and 5 attended 3 regionals, for a total 98 event slots occupied by the 65 teams, and and average 1.507 event slots per team. Assuming this holds roughly true during growth:

911 Teams would need 1373 event slots, an average of 40 slots per event means we'd need 35 events. 35 events in a 6 week span, means an average of a little less than 6 events per week. Ontario would need 7 fields on its own. 7 fields and 35 venues.

Each event requires a number of volunteers. Lets conservatively put that number at 40. 40 volunteers times 6 concurrent events per week means 240 volunteers MINIMUM, and that's only valid if the same people volunteer every week. If every volunteer were unique at every event, we'd need 40x35= 1400 volunteers.

Those 35 events would send 35x6 = 210 teams to CMP. (This discounts repeat winners, which we all know happens, but even the minimum possible, assuming the same teams won each week would be 36, still ~10% of CMP's capacity, just for Ontario)

Continuing this discussion: There are 24,348 public high schools in the United States. I put together a quick spreadsheet to compute these numbers. I attached it here. It also includes the number of schools in every state in the United States.

[Tetraman]

I remember when the 1500's were rookies and I thought that FIRST would never get bigger than that.

Can't wait to see what happens when we hit team 9999.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by Kyler386

When did you guys start working on this?

In the beginning this sort of fell out of other records we started keeping in 2005. Then it became a community effort in this 2009 thread.

P.S. Nice data to play with Andrew.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Tetraman

Can't wait to see what happens when we hit team 9999.

The T5K problem?

Although FLL seemed to handle it.

[Joe Ross]

Due to the IP address allocations, the current control system scheme will fail at either 10,000, or 25,500, depending on the assumptions that were made in the software.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by davepowers

Throw up a picture?! I miss those OI's, they took 3 seconds to boot and connect, not 45-90.

-Dave

Well, not exactly a 3-digit display model, but if you're feeling nostalgic:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/img...9a8e07c6_l.jpg