Meaning of Coopertition Award in 2012

[Ed Law]

I debated for a long time whether I should post this. I don't want other teams to misunderstood my intent, but somebody needs to bring this up.

This is from the FIRST website

6.5 Coopertition™ Award

To determine the winner of the Cooperition Award, the FMS will rank all teams in decreasing order, using the following sorting criteria:

1st Order Sort 2 x Coopertition Score - Qualification Score
2nd Order Sort Coopertition Score

The team or teams receiving the top ranking after both sorts will receive the Coopertition Award.

This seems reasonable giving a factor of two to Coopertition Score. However somebody at FIRST forgot that this year the Qualification Score is not just 2 X # of Wins + # of Ties, but they decided to add the Coopertition Score to the Qualification Score as well.

This effectively made the formula for winning the Coopertition Award equal to Coopertition Score - Qualification Score. Since the Qualification Score is usually higher than the Coopertition Score, this number is actual negative in all the cases I have seen. Hence the team that usually win is the one with the lowest negative number. The unintended consequence is that the teams that won are generally very low in the seeding with very low Qualification Score and they were in some matches where their alliance balanced on the Coopertition Bridge. Unfortunately most of the time it was not the team who won that actually successfully balanced on the Coopertition Bridge to earn the points.

I am not bringing this up to say some teams did not deserve to win that award. According to FIRST, the Coopertition™ Award celebrates the team that best demonstrates the greatest level of Coopertition™ during the event, based on their performance on the field. The formula that is being used is not reflecting this.

A simple fix would be to change the 1st Order Sort to 3 x Coopertition Score - Qualification Score.

[nikeairmancurry]

Thanks Ed, I was really curious how it was possible that teams with low Coopertition scores (my team included) were winning that award. I curious if FIRST is aware of it or not.

[Josh Drake]

I would think it would be logged into somewhere which two teams were successful at pulling off the balance or attempted balance (1 point). Then the award would go to the team that pulled if off the most. The added difficulty of balancing a bridge with another robot that has little to no communication with you deserves an award. So the award that is given should reflect that ability to cooperate.
I too have seen teams win the award this year and wonder how that happened. Once you explained it, it makes sence.

[Koko Ed]

I think FIRST made this award so the Engineering Inspiration award would no longer be FIRST's most mysterious award. Because how they come up with who deserves to win the award is a mystery to me.

[Josh Drake]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

I think FIRST made this award so the Engineering Inspiration award would no longer be FIRST's most mysterious award. Because how they come up with who deserves to win the award is a mystery to me.

LOL!!!

[Jim Meyer]

I was wondering about this. I guess this is their way to ensure the award doesn't go to the #1 seed most of the time. The award goes to teams that get notably more coopertition points than qualification points. They probably imagined this as a selfless robot that puts the coop bridge ahead of themselves winning.

[Clinton Bolinger]

But teams that never actually attempted to go on to the Coop Bridge have won this awards. You can go back and look at the match videos and see that.

I just don't think FIRST got their formula right on this but they did get the point values of the game right.

-Clinton-

[TimSchley]

May I just say that sometimes this really does work out though. The team I have been mentoring for the past several months, team 997 from Corvallis High School in Corvallis, Oregon won the award at the Autodesk Oregon Regional.
This team won the award after lots and lots of unlucky mechanical failures, and by our third match, out bridge arm was completely broken. So, this team decided that instead of getting mopey and depressed, they would figure out another way of being a valuable team member. So they constructed a sort of wedge used to lift up the bridge for other teams. In every one of our following matches we did our job of lifting bridges and helping others get on the bridge. Though we did not always successfully get robots balanced on bridges, we still did our best to be a great team member. Also, through the entire regional, students were out and about, helping other teams get working after their robots had mechanical, electrical, and software issues (I know this is more towards the GP award, but that is also towards the whole "go turn in forms for our team because we helped you!" issue). So even though we only ended up winning one of our matches, I am so proud of this team because they have demonstrated to the fullest extent the meaning of Coopertition and Gracious Professionalism.