[FRC Blog] Changes to the Standard District Point System

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

Also not offical, but I remember this vaguely:

It's a bell curve, with a normalized amount of points at the upper limit to keep the values within a similar range as last year's potential on field point structure.

I checked out the past distribution of WLT points to see if it actually was normal in the past. I've attached a graph of the distribution of WLT points in MAR for the past three seasons. (And also a comparison to a normal distribution with the parameters observed the past three years).

Interestingly, no MAR team in the past few years went 12-0-0 at a district event. The closest teams were 341 at Hatboro 2012 and 2590 at Hatboro 2013 (both went 11-0-1). Using a normal distribution there should only have been ~1.3 teams over the past few years to get the full 24 WLT points. The new system will probably give the top seed 24 points though, changing the system slightly from either a normal distribution or the actual distribution.

Additionally the normal distribution would give more teams 0 WLT points than has happened the past few years. Two teams have completed an event with 0 WLT points over this timespan and the normal distribution says that ~1.5 teams should have received 0 points during those seasons. I wonder if this new system will give points to a team who seeded last.


On a different note, I'm mildly upset that FIRST hadn't thought about district events when they wrote the past two manuals. This WLT issue should have been addressed and figured out before kickoff. In this Frank Answers Friday post Frank said that the rules governing advancement to the District Championship and the World Championship would be in the 2015 manual. They are not.