Robotics vs Sports

[staplemonx]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

To compare to sports (especially with a pretty biased and self generated graph) is a little immature and unprofessional.

All of the sports data was pulled directly from an article that is referenced. What data would you put in for the two robotics teams to make this graph more realistic?

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Taylor

The money's gotta go somewhere. Where does it go? (not being snarky - I'm truly asking)

The way their shirt orders are handled is similar to most websites (that aren't venders) handling of such things.

They made an account with company XYZ (there are plenty of them), where you upload a design, set colors, set profit (they set it to $0), etc... When someone orders a shirt, it's actually made one at a time. The company is located somewhere, doesn't stock the shirts, and just makes them per order. They're then shipped to the person who orders directly and 254 has no hands in the process.

I know you can set the profit to whatever you want, but they chose $0.

[Akash Rastogi]

To clarify, this isn't the situation specifically our team is in, but just something in the Philly area. We've been lucky enough to work with schools that balance sports and STEM.

We also know that schools will obviously keep programs that more kids know and are interested in already.

Adam's post pretty much sums it up. The data and graph are interesting, but need to be taken with a grain of salt.

[staplemonx]

Originally Posted by mathking

You need a lot more data, since you seem to be assuming that the average number of kids from each sport go on to college, but your above average number of robotics kids. But this is almost certainly not the case. Furthermore, your no brainer is not a no brainer. From even your own analysis cross country is a good deal. And if cross country has a higher than 55% rate of athletes going to college (which is very likely) it would be more cost effective on either metric.

Yeah, we might try and find a grad and college rate for each sport to make the data more realistic. Does any one have a good lead on that? We can also add in an expected revenue column to the data. If we do, then most robotics teams would move from a school cost to the revenue columns since as someone pointed out most robotics funding comes from outside sources.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by staplemonx

All of the sports data was pulled directly from an article that is referenced. What data would you put in for the two robotics teams to make this graph more realistic?

This is actually something I'd like to see. In the past I have had teachers complain that FRC was too expensive based on cost/student. I understand that the numbers might be closer but I would like to see an accurate representation of cost/student compared to other activities. This would be beneficial in our requests for funds (showing that we are cost competitive with other activities that teach some of the same qualities of leadership and teamwork) as well as using it as a measuring stick for our own efficiency.

What data do we need? Where can we get this data?

[staplemonx]

Thanks for all of the feedback

Here is some additional data that includes some of your comments

We added a revenue column. Was able to ind revenue average for football teams. Moved most of the funding for robotics teams into the revenue column since school only pay a limited amount for robotics. For all other sports we made their revenue a fixed amount of 2k per year.

We added pay for the large robotics team coaches.

We changed the graduation rate of the two least leveraged sports to graduation rates from the NCAA web site. For all other sports we left graduation rate at national average.



Again here is the data for the new chart


More info on this topic can be found here. This includes sources for the new data.
http://www.atomicrobotics.com/2011/10/cost-kid/

[Laaba 80]

Originally Posted by staplemonx

We included both the average and a large team. There are two robotics data points. One for 15 kids and a 11K and one for 60 kids and 35K. What data would you put in for robotics?

Agreed. the data from the original article where we got the sports data does not include revenue brought in from the team. This data is skewed and could move football and basketball down lower on the list.

That was just a misunderstanding on my part then. I took average and large robotics, to mean the size of the robot instead of team size. I was thinking FRC v FTC/VEX.

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by Laaba 80

That was just a misunderstanding on my part then. I took average and large robotics, to mean the size of the robot instead of team size. I was thinking FRC v FTC/VEX.

Don't know where you got your revenue numbers but I know our high school will bring more than double that per football game.