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.

[sanddrag]

I'm curious what teams are using for internet connectivity for their CowScout implementations.

[DavidGitz]

Ok thanks for all the information! We are going to test it out this weekend while watching a webcast regional to see if it will work for us.

[DavidGitz]

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

Ok thanks for all the information! We are going to test it out this weekend while watching a webcast regional to see if it will work for us.

Is it possible to scout an event that your team isn't attending?

[stundt1]

It wont let me scout the regional at all it says its not available. Why can this be fixed?

[Jon Jack]

Originally Posted by stundt1

It wont let me scout the regional at all it says its not available. Why can this be fixed?

Sorry about that. We forgot up setup those events for scouting. Should be good to go now.

[ahollenbach]

Wow. This is totally amazing. You guys honestly did an incredible, amazing, wonderful job with this, and I'm sure many, many teams will be thanking you in the years to come. Great job

[DavidGitz]

I found the following bugs with this software:
1. The Offensive/Defensive score for a team is reported to be 0/10. For the team in question I put in random numbers for both (not 0) and this still is reported as 0.
2. On a mobile phone, specifically a Samsung Galaxy S the + arrows on the right are about a half width lower than the - arrows on the left. Not a big deal but a little confusing.
3. It seems there is a delay in using the arrow buttons between pressing it and pressing it again. It may be designed this way though.
4. Is it possible to develop it to put general notes in for a team?

Again, great job guys, I'm going to recommend that we use this.

[charlie.drummer]

Where from the FIRST site does CowScout get the scores for each match? Does it take it off of a page like this, http://www2.usfirst.org/2012comp/Eve...chresults.html or is there another place that the information is stored?

[Bob Steele]

I looked at the data from my team (1983)
It shows erroneous data... for instance it counted two ties that did not exist.
It is counting the third match of any qualifying round as a 0-0 tie if one team won the first two and no third match was played.
It also did not count two losses we had in the qualifying round as part of our qualifying match score. It did count all of the losses for the total but didn't count them during qualifying...

Can you explain this? I am not complaining.. just wondering if this is a glitch that could lead to other issues with rankings.

thanks
Coach Steele

[Ninja_Bait]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

I looked at the data from my team (1983)
It shows erroneous data... for instance it counted two ties that did not exist.
It is counting the third match of any qualifying round as a 0-0 tie if one team won the first two and no third match was played.
It also did not count two losses we had in the qualifying round as part of our qualifying match score. It did count all of the losses for the total but didn't count them during qualifying...

Can you explain this? I am not complaining.. just wondering if this is a glitch that could lead to other issues with rankings.

thanks
Coach Steele

This is true for 694 as well. We have overall 5-5-1 (The one tie is a 0-0 unplayed elims match, not a huge problem), but that should be 5-3-0 in quals and 0-2-1 in elims, not 5-0-0 and 0-5-1 as CowScout claims.

[stundt1]

Can you open up week 4 events for scouting tonight?

[Jon Jack]

Originally Posted by stundt1

Can you open up week 4 events for scouting tonight?

Yes we will be activating the week 4 events today sometime.

As for the win/loss/tie issues. It's a problem in that way we capture matches. FIRST displays 3 matches per round when the elimination schedule is posted. Therefore the scraper captures all three matches. We will go trough and remove those matches whic will fix the problem.

[swwrobotics]

Why when I try to edit the picklist does the whole screen go blank?

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by swwrobotics

Why when I try to edit the picklist does the whole screen go blank?

We're at the DC regional as well and are unable to create a picklist either. This is somewhat disappointing.