Introducing: CowScout

[Jon Jack]

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

1. My team's (1208) are inaccurate in Cow Scout but are accurate on TBA, it looks like it is missing 2 of the matches we lost in Qualifications, 4 of the matches we won in Eliminations and the Finals are un-scored (0-0) resulting in ties. I also noticed that similar inaccuracies exist on our alliance partner, 1769.

The way we're scraping data is different from TBA. IIRC TBA is using the twitter feed to collect match results. We're scraping the FIRST website. There are a couple regionals from last weekend that were not scrapped correctly and we're looking at why that is. San Diego scraped fine, but Alamo and NH didn't...

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

2. I have seen people discuss the different graphs that are available, how do you get to these?

The graphs are available only when there is scouting data that your team collected or is being shared by another team.

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

3. The Pick List function is interesting. It seems that during the manual choice portion of it, it selects teams out of order?

There is a reason teams are selected out of order. The picklist manager is sorting teams based on an algorithm we have in place. Because of this the teams it's asking you to chose between will not be in order.

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

4. Is the Test Event still up? The main thing I am curious about is if the Pick List feature will pull data off the Scouting data as well as the OPR data if the Scouting data is available.

At the moment there is not a test event up. There is a way you can scout an event a day prior to your event. I will talk about this later in the week.

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

5. Will there be separate events for each Division at Championships? If not, how is that managed?

Because FIRST sees each division as a separate tournament, each division will be ran as an independent tournament.

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

6. Is there a manual available anywhere? If not, what do these fields mean and how are they determined:
CCWM
Avg. Def Score
Avg. WM
+/-

We are currently working on a manual, but it probably won't be available until after the season. I can explain what these are:

CCWM = Calculated Contribution to the winning margin
It's similar to OPR except rather than using the score of the alliance, we use the winning margin of the alliance. Say in an example match, you have:

Team A, Team B, Team C and they score 100 points. In that same match you have Team D, Team E, Team F and they score 75 points.

Since OPR is the contribution of each alliance member towards the final score, the OPR equation would be:

Team A + Team B + Team C = 100
Team D + Team E + Team F = 75

In CCWM, we're finding out how much each team in contributing to the winning margin. So we replace the alliance score with the winning margin of the alliance. So the equation would look like:

Team A + Team B + Team C = 25
Team D + Team E + Team F = -25.

Avg. Def Score
This is the average score of the team's opponents.

Avg. WM
This is the team's average winning margin.

+/-
This is a statistic borrowed from the NHL and the NBA. It measures a team's effect on a match. In the NHL and NBA it's calculated like this:

Every time a team scores a point all the players on the court (or ice) get a +1 to their +/-. Every time the opposing team scores a point those same players get a -1 towards their +/-.

For example,
Say Kobe Bryant comes off the bench with 2 minutes left in the game and the Lakers are trailing 80-75. The Lakers end up winning the game 95-85. Kobe's +/- for that part of the game would be +5 (15 points for the Lakers - 10 points scored by the opposing team). When you total the +/- of all the minutes Kobe was in the game that would be his +/- for the game.