Official: New England Districts in 2014

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Jay Money 1058

Interesting choice of Boston for District Champs, How many teams can the Agannis hold? I personally loved Boston when my team went there in 2012 but I'm having trouble remembering how much space there was.

Last year's Boston Regional had an open capacity of 52 teams (according to FIRST's website), but the previous years had up to 53 teams.

[Nathan Streeter]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

Last year's Boston Regional had an open capacity of 52 teams (according to FIRST's website), but the previous years had up to 53 teams.

Hmm... so either they will have to have the District Championship be a fair bit smaller than initial hopes, or they plan to somehow house another 10-20 teams...

Boston seems like a reasonable location. Ideally it'd be closer to Connecticut though... I'm sure there'll be a significant contingent coming from CT who would all be well out of "daily-commute" range. That said, even teams that do live in the 30-60 miles range will have to consider whether or not they want to fight there way into Boston on Thursday and Friday morning...

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

Hmm... so either they will have to have the District Championship be a fair bit smaller than initial hopes, or they plan to somehow house another 10-20 teams...

Boston seems like a reasonable location. Ideally it'd be closer to Connecticut though... I'm sure there'll be a significant contingent coming from CT who would all be well out of "daily-commute" range. That said, even teams that do live in the 30-60 miles range will have to consider whether or not they want to fight there way into Boston on Thursday and Friday morning...

MAR Championships this year(and next year) is ~1 hour away for most teams, to put things into comparison.

And in regards to team numbers, in FiM last year, there were 207 teams registered. Of those 207 teams, there were 64 region championship spots, meaning 31% of teams made it the region championship. In MAR last year, there were 110 team registered with a total of 50 teams registered, so 45% of teams making it.

In New England(data taken from this map, there are 151 teams currently in NE, so 53 teams at Region Championship would be 35% of teams making it. (realistically, I assume if 53 is the max capacity it would be bumped up to 54 teams to limit the usage of surrogate matches)This blog says their goal was 60 teams(I believe this was the initial number MAR was going for), so that would be about 40% of all teams. Overall, this provides a fair/similar percentage of teams in comparison to FiM and MAR.

[Pault]

Yea, the Boston pits were a little crowded with 50 teams last year, but I can definitely see "our new overlords" finding the space for 10 more teams. Even if they have to downsize the pits a little from the usual 10x10, I think I would be OK with that. And I think that having the champs in a big city will do good for publicity. But mostly I am just biased towards Boston because my team is in Boston (I did a little dance when I found out the champs would be here ).

Also, am I the only one surprised that the number of events south of MA went from 1 to 4, but there was only 1 event added for the rest of New England. I'm not an expert on NE FRC geography, but I just find it very strange.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

MAR Championships this year(and next year) is ~1 hour away for most teams, to put things into comparison.

And in regards to team numbers, in FiM last year, there were 207 teams registered. Of those 207 teams, there were 64 region championship spots, meaning 31% of teams made it the region championship. In MAR last year, there were 110 team registered with a total of 50 teams registered, so 45% of teams making it.

In New England(data taken from this map, there are 151 teams currently in NE, so 53 teams at Region Championship would be 35% of teams making it. (realistically, I assume if 53 is the max capacity it would be bumped up to 54 teams to limit the usage of surrogate matches)This blog says their goal was 60 teams(I believe this was the initial number MAR was going for), so that would be about 40% of all teams. Overall, this provides a fair/similar percentage of teams in comparison to FiM and MAR.

The first year for FiM, there were about 120 teams and 60-64 at MSC. in other words about 50% of teams were invited to teh state championship. Somewhere between 33%&50% feels about right. much lower than 33%, and it starts making it so that one bad event requires a spectacular event to qualify...

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by IKE

The first year for FiM, there were about 120 teams and 60-64 at MSC. in other words about 50% of teams were invited to teh state championship. Somewhere between 33%&50% feels about right. much lower than 33%, and it starts making it so that one bad event requires a spectacular event to qualify...

Depending on how you define "bad event," even at around 40% it's already that way. If you miss the eliminations at your first event, it often requires a trip all the way to the finals at your second district to qualify for the region championship event.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by Pault

Also, am I the only one surprised that the number of events south of MA went from 1 to 4, but there was only 1 event added for the rest of New England. I'm not an expert on NE FRC geography, but I just find it very strange.

Considering there are <5 teams in Vermont, I'm not surprised at a lack of an event there. Maine and Rhode Island were both close to 3-6 teams not too long ago, but are growing fast and do need one event per state. New Hampshire is at around 30 teams currently, so two does seem reasonable. MA and CT are the major sites for FRC teams in New England (I believe it's about 50 each) so 3-4 makes sense, especially considering everyone needs two events. I can't wait to see the venues for district events close to home, that'll be a major factor in our choice of events (most of our team seems to be willing to sacrifice distance for a great venue). Great job with the quick updates NE FIRST!

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Depending on how you define "bad event," even at around 40% it's already that way. If you miss the eliminations at your first event, it often requires a trip all the way to the finals at your second district to qualify for the region championship event.

Example this year: 2495. Finished second to last at TCNJ then went on to win Lenape, and even with that, they barely made it in.


Also, it should be taken into account that at 9 Districts, that means 9 Chairmans winners possibly "taking away"(not saying that to be demeaning/condescending) point-slots. IMO with that many Chairmans there should be more spots at the Region Championship(of course, that is, if the NE FIRST points system autoqualifies Chairmans winners, which per Jim Zondag's FiM FAQ is probably the case)

[Niezrecki]

Originally Posted by Tetraman

This is how I sum up this news: http://youtu.be/VbxgYlcNxE8?t=13m59s

Now just waiting on NY....

That must be a summary of excitement. But all that music makes me think of is you overthrowing FIRST V for Vendetta style.

[Steven Donow]

Another calculation I thought of: The number of teams a region sends to championship from the region championship is: the number of teams in that region as compared to the number of overall teams; this percentage is the percentage of teams at championship that are representative of that region(the calculations I ended up with when comparing MAR and FIM were both off by about 4 teams less, so I'm guessing the number of overall teams is incorrect).


Based off last year(team numbers all taken from this map):

There were 2341 teams registered. 400 at championships. With 151 teams in NEFIRST, that's about 6.45% which is about 25 teams(realistically with the data probably a lower number). NEFIRST is replacing 5 district events, so that means 5 Chairman's, also adding on 1 RAS, 1 EI(this could change as MAR did 2 EI's this year), and 3 winning alliance teams means there should be about 10-15 "ranking qualifiers"*


*of course, this is all just me being bored and in a number-crunching mood, and could all change dependent on how the NEFIRST board decided to do their points/ranking/qualifying system

[JackS]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

There were 2341 teams registered. 400 at championships. With 151 teams in NEFIRST, that's about 6.45% which is about 25 teams(realistically with the data probably a lower number). NEFIRST is replacing 5 district events, so that means 5 Chairman's, also adding on 1 RAS, 1 EI(this could change as MAR did 2 EI's this year), and 3 winning alliance teams means there should be about 10-15 "ranking qualifiers"*

If you use the number of regionals converted metric, NE would get 30 spots. The district model is hard to sell if a region suddenly loses ~18% of their CMP spots.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by JackS

If you use the number of regionals converted metric, NE would get 30 spots. The district model is hard to sell if a region suddenly loses ~18% of their CMP spots.

Except that I remember hearing something about MI (and MAR?) going to a percentage of total teams model for slots at Champs. IIRC, the reason was something like the massive growth in MI. (Source: Jim Zondag's whitepaper, Q24)

That being the case, I would suspect that if an area starts with "# of regionals", and then gets some growth to the point where "% of total" gives more teams, then that would be the way to go; however, if you want all district areas roughly equal, then they all gotta be the same way.

[AlexD744]

Since it seems that Florida's events aren't lining up my school's break, it's nice to see that the Championship will be in Boston . Can't wait to volunteer!

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

Also, it should be taken into account that at 9 Districts, that means 9 Chairmans winners possibly "taking away"(not saying that to be demeaning/condescending) point-slots.

This depends on the model that is used. As it is possible/likely that FIRST will be standardizing the system across the districts, and its hard to tell what the final result will be. Using several points model simulators (ie the ones in this thread), of the 5 NE winners, only one was even close to the cutoff of the 53/60 line in one model I've seen (and easily made it in several others). Yes if you add 4 more, there is a slight possibility that the robots will not be as high in points, but in general, I think the District points wont produce as wide a variation as the CA performance at Worlds correlation.

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

Another calculation I thought of: The number of teams a region sends to championship from the region championship is: the number of teams in that region as compared to the number of overall teams; this percentage is the percentage of teams at championship that are representative of that region(the calculations I ended up with when comparing MAR and FIM were both off by about 4 teams less, so I'm guessing the number of overall teams is incorrect).
...With 151 teams in NEFIRST, that's about 6.45% which is about 25 teams(realistically with the data probably a lower number). NEFIRST is replacing 5 district events, so that means 5 Chairman's, also adding on 1 RAS, 1 EI(this could change as MAR did 2 EI's this year), and 3 winning alliance teams means there should be about 10-15 "ranking qualifiers"*

Take a read through the old NE Proposal. Because of the 5 events, the district was told they were given 30 qualifying slots. (I think I heard that MI is getting more because of their growth, but FIRST's original stance was you get a # of slots based on the number of regionals you had when you went to districts).

NE also has a large number of pre-qualified teams (CCA, Sustaining) including teams 23, 151, 175, 190 & 236. If these teams opt out of the DCMP like 341 did last year at the MAR DCMP (or FIRST omits them from the # of qualifying teams), then NE could potentially send 35 teams.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

There were 2341 teams registered. 400 at championships. With 151 teams in NEFIRST,

Your numbers are just a little off. That map hasn't been kept up-to-date.

2524 Teams total for the 3013 season
154 New England teams competed.

see http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on