Practice bot morality

[Justin Montois]

Well said IKE.

/Thread perhaps.

[SteveGPage]

What he said! ^^^^

[BrendanB]

Amen IKE!!!!

I can bet that everyone who says practice bots are unfair doesn't have the resources to build one. If they pushed their team harder to get those resources, completely different story.

[Ninja_Bait]

Just to add one more insight along the lines of IKE's, from our friend Kurt Vonnegut: http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

[2544HCRC]

I've also been involved in car racing. I take a slightly different view. What happens in most racing series is that a few teams start to dominate the field because of resources. Pretty soon all of the other teams start to think "what's the use?" and quit showing up and pouring money down an unfillable hole. So racing groups including SCCA institute a class system. Imagine racing without the class system. You would have far fewer racers. It turns out it's much more fun when you show up and have a shot at winning. If the rules aren't adjusted the field dwindles and dies. I see that in FIRST. Rookie teams are sold one thing and show up to another. My guess is that if the presentation for FIRST went something like you are going to need a team of Engineering mentors, access to a pretty sophisticated shop, and the finances to build 2 robots + in order to be competitive, the field would and will be much much smaller. We did BEST this year as a trial and will probably switch over to FTC and BEST next year. For us as a small team with kids that aren't interested in building a big team and very limited resources, FRC has proven to be just too much. If you have a successful FRC program, great but this entire discussion seems to hit a nerve that most of us feel and that is, robotics is great, the idea is awesome as a tool for teaching kids, but FRC might not be the best fit for many of the teams. It's only fun being a back marker for a little while. Pretty soon the newness wears off and you have to make a decision, do you want to do what it takes to win in the class your in or do you want to find another class that might be a better fit.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by 2544HCRC

My guess is that if the presentation for FIRST went something like you are going to need a team of Engineering mentors, access to a pretty sophisticated shop, and the finances to build 2 robots + in order to be competitive, the field would and will be much much smaller.

I would like to point out that there is rather large number of rookies in picking position at each regional and many are on winning alliances. I would also like to remind folks of 2041 (coming from an inner city, largely Hispanic population) taking Silver medals with one robot, eight students total and only three engineering mentors in both the Minnesota Regional and 2010 Champs. And let us not forget my all time favorite hardworking team, 842, Falcon Robotics. When I think of what a team can accomplish, I think of what that team, student and mentors, are able to accomplish.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

I would also like to remind folks of 2041 (coming from an inner city, largely Hispanic population) taking Silver medals with one robot, eight students total and only three engineering mentors in both the Minnesota Regional and 2010 Champs.

I agree with your overal point, Al, but I think there are a ton of teams that would kill for one let alone three engineering mentors (especially one with the knowledge and experience that Rich Olivera has).

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

I would like to point out that there is rather large number of rookies in picking position at each regional and many are on winning alliances. I would also like to remind folks of 2041 (coming from an inner city, largely Hispanic population) taking Silver medals with one robot, eight students total and only three engineering mentors in both the Minnesota Regional and 2010 Champs. And let us not forget my all time favorite hardworking team, 842, Falcon Robotics. When I think of what a team can accomplish, I think of what that team, student and mentors, are able to accomplish.

Al, this is one thing I think you are mis-representing. Yes the rookie class has elite teams and the veteran class has elite teams, but these two are not comparable. What is the highest team number ever to win champs? 1114.
Some awesome things can be done with a lot of dedication and very little resources but I don't remember the last time one of those brand-new, little teams knocked out your alliance at champs.

FIRST is H-A-R-D!!! And to compete with the best your going to need comparable resources.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by lemiant

Al, this is one thing I think you are mis-representing. Yes the rookie class has elite teams and the veteran class has elite teams, but these two are not comparable. What is the highest team number ever to win champs? 1114.
Some awesome things can be done with a lot of dedication and very little resources but I don't remember the last time one of those brand-new, little teams knocked out your alliance at champs.

FIRST is H-A-R-D!!! And to compete with the best your going to need comparable resources.

Two rookies made Einstein in 2010. In 2009, a single rookie made Einstein. Two years before that, in 2007, a sophomore team made Einstein (and that same team almost went the year before; their robot started having parts fail in division finals). And it took 2056 multiple years to make Einstein; they still haven't won it, despite having not lost a single regional they've attended since starting up. (They were Galileo semifinalists their rookie year.) If you're looking for winning the Championships as your measure of winning, 3/2353 teams will win it this year; that's 0.127%, which means it's pretty tough on just about everyone to win it. (Odds improve to about 0.88% if you just factor in the roughly 340 Championship teams.) Yes, those are under 1% chance for any given team.

[pfreivald]

Since when are any of us owed victory?

A couple of rambling thoughts on this meandering topic:

One of the coolest moments in 1551 history was when the Thunder Chickens were worried we weren't going to pick them at FLR in 2010. (We did pick them, and we won, and it was another of the coolest moments in 1551 history!) No one gave us that; we earned it, and it's more special because of it. ...and yet the trip to championship was near disaster on the field, thankyouverymuch, as we learned some important lessons about durability when you do multiple events. (Murphy camped in our pit in Atlanta, but everything that went wrong was, ultimately, our fault.)

There's nothing wrong with the bar being set very high (as in, as high as other teams choose to set it within the bounds of the rules), but there could be something to better educate the rookie teams on what they're getting into. Pulling in kids and adults from other districts for a year or two before spinning them off into their own team gives them a much firmer foundation, and a much better idea of what they're getting into.

Talk to the mentors of 217 and 254 and 1114 and 2056 -- they'll happily tell you what they've done to get to where they are. Use that information as you see fit, whether it's a team overhaul or incremental improvement. Don't bemoan the circumstances that put your school or team at a disadvantage, or do, but either way take them as a challenge and circumvent them as best you can.

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by EricH

Two rookies made Einstein in 2010. In 2009, a single rookie made Einstein. Two years before that, in 2007, a sophomore team made Einstein (and that same team almost went the year before; their robot started having parts fail in division finals). And it took 2056 multiple years to make Einstein; they still haven't won it, despite having not lost a single regional they've attended since starting up. (They were Galileo semifinalists their rookie year.) If you're looking for winning the Championships as your measure of winning, 3/2353 teams will win it this year; that's 0.127%, which means it's pretty tough on just about everyone to win it. (Odds improve to about 0.88% if you just factor in the roughly 340 Championship teams.) Yes, those are under 1% chance for any given team.

This is what I said. Rookies can be great, and I don't doubt that it is only a matter of time until one of them actually wins champs, but the odds ARE against them. Resources help you win, I don't think anyone here is going to challenge that.

And just for fun here's some math (Admittedly filled with all sorts of assumptions):

Last year, with numbers almost all the way to 4000, the un-weighted odds of a single team on the winning alliance being below 1000 was 25%... All three teams on the winning alliance were below 1000! The odds of that were 25%^3 or ~1.5%. that means that statistically the odds of all three teams on the wining alliance being below 1000 were just higher than the odds of any individual championship team winning. Obviously that is absurd! I could predict that the same will happen this year with at least a 50% chance of being right, you couldn't pick a winning team with anything approaching certainty.

Or take it one step further. 1114 was founded in 2003 so no team founded in a year after that would has ever won the championship. Assuming the ~2800 teams founded between 2003 and 2011 were founded in even increments of 350 teams per year the odds of none of these teams winning championships between 2004 and 2011 are:
((1200/1550) * (1200/1900) * (1200/2250) * (1200/2600) * (1200/2950) * (1200/3300) * (1200/3650) * (1200/4000)) ^3
or .00000054%.

I believe we can effectively determine from that number that veterans winning is not just statistical variation

[IKE]

While i generally applaud folks that do the math, with 2400 teams and numbers well into 4,300+, there is nearly a 50% total attrition rate in FRC. The probability of a team winning the 2010 championship when they were a one year wonder in 2008 is 0%...
********************************************

Originally Posted by lemiant

FIRST is H-A-R-D!!! And to compete with the best your going to need comparable resources.

Let me fix that for you...

FIRST is H-A-R-D!!! And to beat the best often, your going to need comparable resources or a bit of luck.

Often times, the #1 alliance is the winner of the event. The #1 alliance (especially when it wins) is generally comprised with the 2 best robots in the division and then the 20th to 28th best (2nd round pick). If you want to repeatably beat the best, you must be around the top 4 at an event which is generally the area filled by the high resource teams. At many events, the 2nd round pick by the number 1 alliance is around the 50%-tile for the event. So, to compete with the best at a regional, you generally need to be top 20-ish of 40-60 teams, and for the world championship top 20-ish of 80-90 teams. This is easily achieveable for most teams with some organization and preparation, and delivering on relatively modest performance goals.

Per comments above, 27, 33, 1718 and approximately 300 (6-10 slots x 50+ events) others fall into a category of being really good but generally not the top 2-3 teams at any given event. When you are around the 3-10th best team at an event, you will more than likely fall into a valley of making elims, but not in an alliance strong enough to win. I would still consider this competing with those amazing teams, though not being able to beat them on most occasions. Within those 300 teams, you will find hundreds of examples of teams with significantly less resources maximizing their potential through benchmarking, smart design, hard work, and determination. Every year on Einstein, you will find teams that many might consider "lucky" for getting picked by 2 other awesome teams. More often, these teams have made their luck by performing really well and putting themselves into a position to "be lucky".

Notice, I mentioned 300 teams above. That leaves about 2100 other teams within FRC. Many of those are young teams some of which are over their heads and/or don't know what to do. A significant chunk though are teams that have the resources to be the 2nd round pick, but instead over-reach or are underprepared. There are a host of relatively young teams doing well year after year by coming up with good reasonable goals that challenge them, and then executing on those goals. While I do not know many of them outside of michigan, I can tell you 1718, 1918, 2054, 2137, 2337, 2612, 2619 2834, and 3098 have been steadily improving the last several years and have been beating many a vetran team. There are a large handful of other young teams that have shown a lot of promise but it takes more than 1 year to see how consistent they are going to be.

Of the 9 teams above, I could go on for probably an hour or more on how impressed I am with those teams executing their plans. The more informed will also note that the above teams not only are competitive on the field, but have also won business, website, Chairman's, and rookie-allstar awards. Some of them have even fostered a rookie team themselves (with the rookies being aprt of the handful I am watching/looking out for). These are teams that are operating at or near the highest levels of what FIRST is trying to achieve.

If you are only paying attention to the 12 teams making it to Einstein, then you are missing 99.5% (2400-12)/2400 of what FIRST is really about. It is really humbling to compare yourself to those guys. If you start focusing in on the success of the 300 I mentioned above you will find a lot of teams that regard their season successful without having to measure it against other teams success. You will find many improvements your team can make with little or no cost to your team towards becoming one of those 300 (hopefully this number will get larger).

Back on topic:
You will also find a lot of the 300 are teams with practice bots (who spent the $2-3K on making a practice bot instead of flying everyone to XYZ), or maybe they rebuilt their 2011 bot to be like one of the other teams they admire. Or maybe they made serious robustness improvements and competed at some off-season evnts for $100 or... maybe your team will talk with them at your next event and find some of the things they are doing right that you can do and then instead of debating the morality of in-equalities of FRC we can talk about how 4XXX learned a ton from team 2XXX in 2012 and is now kicking bot in 2013...

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by lemiant

This is what I said. Rookies can be great, and I don't doubt that it is only a matter of time until one of them actually wins champs, but the odds ARE against them. Resources help you win, I don't think anyone here is going to challenge that.

And just for fun here's some math (Admittedly filled with all sorts of assumptions):

Last year, with numbers almost all the way to 4000, the un-weighted odds of a single team on the winning alliance being below 1000 was 25%... All three teams on the winning alliance were below 1000! The odds of that were 25%^3 or ~1.5%. that means that statistically the odds of all three teams on the wining alliance being below 1000 were just higher than the odds of any individual championship team winning. Obviously that is absurd! I could predict that the same will happen this year with at least a 50% chance of being right, you couldn't pick a winning team with anything approaching certainty.

Or take it one step further. 1114 was founded in 2003 so no team founded in a year after that would has ever won the championship. Assuming the ~2800 teams founded between 2003 and 2011 were founded in even increments of 350 teams per year the odds of none of these teams winning championships between 2004 and 2011 are:
((1200/1550) * (1200/1900) * (1200/2250) * (1200/2600) * (1200/2950) * (1200/3300) * (1200/3650) * (1200/4000)) ^3
or .00000054%.

I believe we can effectively determine from that number that veterans winning is not just statistical variation

Actually the odds are even worse than that...

Since FIRST went to the current divisional format in 2001 52.4% (74) of all Einstein slots (140 total) have been filled by just 24 teams with 2 or more Einstein trips!

35.7% of the total slots are taken up by just 12 teams with 3 or more trips.

42.9% (15) of all Championship Winner spots (35) in the same time frame were won by just 6 teams that have won 2 or more championships in divisional era!

The highest number team of the 24 is 1218.

The highest number team of the 12 is 968.

The highest number team of the 6 is 294.

All this said I'm willing to bet a coffee that with a list of 12 teams I can hit on 4 of the 12 Einstein competitors this year before I even know what anyone's robot looks like.

Edit: I forgot to cite my source, Jim Zondag's wonderful championship history white paper that he has published the last 2 years.

[2544HCRC]

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

Edit: I forgot to cite my source, Jim Zondag's wonderful championship history white paper that he has published the last 2 years.

Is there a link to this white paper? I would love to read it.

I would like to give 2 examples of the problem as I see it. The first is from a local wrestling club. They started as a way to expose young kids to wrestling and as a way of promoting the sport. They were very successful for awhile. They were recruiting 4 and 5 year olds into the wresting club and it was a fun thing for kids to do on a Saturday. Instead of being a fun activity for the kids, it became all consuming. If you wanted in you had to submit to all kinds of fundraising activities and travel as a parent. Kids all of the sudden "needed" warm up suits, etc. The team "needed" to travel hundreds of miles for competitions etc. 9 and 10 year olds were pretty much excluded by default because if the difficulty breaking into the sport. The casual crowd fell and left behind the fanatics.

example 2 are the local volunteer fire departments. They have the same problem. The training that is required, combined with the fundraising has left most of the departments with fewer and fewer members. There are very few people that want that kind of commitment.

I see the same sort of thing happening in FRC. Our kids aren't that into robots or robotics. The dozen or so kids that are part of the team will commit (kind of) to a 6 week build season and do a little fundraising, but overall it's a side thing. For most, everything else comes first. I've had kids miss practice because of the swim team, tennis, the school play, bowling, and even because they had an opportunity to go to a friends party or just because they wanted to sleep in and take it easy on a Saturday. I end up (thank god) with 1 or 2 kids that are into it and commit more time than they should. I have no help outside of a couple of parents. The local engineers have been burnt out by the other local teams (both in the double or tripple digit range). They aren't interested in commiting to being away from their family multiple nights a week and the weekend. FRC is becoming more and more competative. Practice bots, multiple regionals, etc, etc, are all leaving the casual teams further and further behind. I'm sure in some minds that's a good thing but if the goal is to expose kids to STEM in an engaging way I see it as very limiting.

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by 2544HCRC

Is there a link to this white paper? I would love to read it.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2383

It's actual just factual statistical data applying weighted rankings to teams based on championship performances. The idea was to settle some of the "whose the best" discussions IIRC.