Understaffed scouting

[josephus]

We have a relatively small team but would like to have an effective scouting group. How might we scout matches effectively with fewer than six people? I'm not worried about pit scouting, as that can be done by one or two people.
--josephus

[EricH]

Originally Posted by josephus

We have a relatively small team but would like to have an effective scouting group. How might we scout matches effectively with fewer than six people? I'm not worried about pit scouting, as that can be done by one or two people.
--josephus

Grab parents to assist to bring you up to six. Repeat for any siblings, mentors, or other random persons you bring with you.

Or partner with another team who does have such a system for an event or two. You get the data and learn one way to scout.

If both of those ideas fail...
I would suggest running a 2-person team, with a backup 2-person team at any given time. Each person scouts one side of the field; the backups double-check.

[New Lightning]

Originally Posted by EricH

Grab parents to assist to bring you up to six. Repeat for any siblings, mentors, or other random persons you bring with you.

Or partner with another team who does have such a system for an event or two. You get the data and learn one way to scout.

If both of those ideas fail...
I would suggest running a 2-person team, with a backup 2-person team at any given time. Each person scouts one side of the field; the backups double-check.

Ditto on this! There are some scouting systems out their, can't really name any of them off the top of my head, that are built for any number of users, find the one that works best for you. Also your best bet since you have so little is some electronic form of scouting. There are a couple of threads comparing the scouting apps I bet you find one that works for you.

[GKrotkov]

If nothing above works, then you could consider this reduction. I've never tried it, and I kind of just dreamed it up right now, but it might put you on the right track. It technically requires two people for the simplest form, but gets worthwhile with three.

Take a look at the scouting sheets being published for a single team and adapt them to a whole alliance. # of totes an alliance stacks, autonomous points for the whole alliance, total points of the whole alliance, litter thrown, etc. Then, you'd plug the data collected for one alliance into each robot on the alliance's individual sheet (in your data collection program), and get a very rough approximation. It's basically the same concept as OPR, but without calculation and being more specific than straight points. You wouldn't even need to make a system different from one for single robots, the data would just be bigger. You could see a general trend that "Oh, when team yyyy is on the field, the highest bin scored is generally higher." Like OPR, that trend might be totally off base, but you could see a trend and corroborate it with a "common sense check".

If you're not doing data entry, the drive team needs to come up to the stands and get the data themselves. You'll have to just stick everything in a binder, put the match schedule on front, and hope they can find what they're looking for. I can see some terrible times trying to deal with that at competition*. In other words, if you intend to do it this way, it looks like data entry will be almost essential.


* "Hey coach, let's go up to the binder and look through 100 matches to find some numbers on our two alliance partners for this last qualification match!" = Not Fun.

[Brandon Ha]

If you are seriously screwed and in a position with almost no members, you could have two people... One per side.

The kicker would be, No defensive Rating ))))

[pabeekm]

I've heard from lots of NC teams that they're in the same boat as you guys; they want to scout but would need to team up with someone to have enough people. I would suggest shooting Marie Hopper an email and asking her to send out to all NC teams asking if anyone wants to share scouts. There are likely several teams who would be interested. Good Luck!

[safiq10]

Last year what we did is we paired up on scouting and worked together with other teams. IT was a really unique experience and were able to use less members but still get valuable data from it.

[XaulZan11]

I would actually do something a little different than some of the suggestions already posted. If I only had only around three scouts, I wouldn't focus too much gathering data. I think scouting an entire alliance will lead to missing too much data (bad/incomplete data isn't very helpful) and scouting one robot per match will lead to extremely small sample sizes. I would rather have subjective data from several matches than knowing a team stacked 5 totes in the one match and no idea what they did in the other five.

Instead, I would focus on making sure watch your upcoming alliance partners (and opponents in other year) in their couple of matches before you are with/against them. Try to become experts on these teams first. Still be aware of what some of the other teams are doing, but your main goal in qualifications should be to win every match (or have the highest average). Then, if it is looking like you may finish the in top 8 (or be picked early), then start really scouting teams that compliment your strategy.

On the whole, I think too many FIRST teams put too much focus on gathering, organizing and displaying data and not as much as actually using the data and learning how robot gets those stats. Way too often I talk with other scouts that can read a report about a robots average in ten different stats, but can't tell you one thing about the actual robot. It is pretty amazing how much credibility you gain in pre-match strategy if you come up to a team and say "I like what you did your last match doing xyz. You scored x points, right?". So, in this respect, not having a huge scouting team is not as detrimental as it may seem.

[Kevin Leonard]

Inter-team scouting efforts can be not only a fantastic tool for gathering data, but also a great way to make new friends on other teams.

For the past few years, Team 20 has run our scouting program, The Constellation, with a number of teams at each of our events. In 2013, we had the opportunity to scout with Team 4265, the Wildbots, at both Archimedes and IRI.
Since then, 4265 has become one of our team's best friends in FRC, despite the fact that they live quite a large distance away from us.

If no teams in your area run a similar program, find another team in a similar situation as you and pair up with them for scouting. You could also go to a more experienced team in your area with an established scouting program and ask them for help. Most teams would be willing to give it a shot.

[viggy96]

Google spreadsheets are always the best.

[TogetherSword8]

What we have done in past years is a lot of gut feelings. When watching a match, what you see, whether in the stands or in queue van make a big difference in who you would choose. Trust your gut, and hope it the 10%of the time it is wrong isn't then.

[Sam_Mills]

Originally Posted by TogetherSword8

What we have done in past years is a lot of gut feelings. When watching a match, what you see, whether in the stands or in queue van make a big difference in who you would choose. Trust your gut, and hope it the 10%of the time it is wrong isn't then.

I would highly recommend any method of scouting that is not this. Championships are lost and won on scouting, and quantitative data is extremely important. (4334 for example would not have been a "gut" pick in 2012, but its a choice that got The Eh Team a division win)

That being said, I support the group scouting method where you work with other teams. Its a little harder to guarantee quality data, but its far superior to no data at all.

[artK]

Inter-team scouting is a good way of doing it, if both teams arrange it beforehand. (My one caution would be to have people from the other team scout your robot to reduce bias).

If you have <=6 people: Have two of them scout each alliance as a whole (swap them in and out as need), and someone compile the data between matches. Then have the remainder scout individual robots determined at the start of the match for specific qualities.

In the early matches, pick teams that are likely to be captains or first picks so you can sort out the top. As matches progress, start going with teams who could make second picks, but still check the top teams.

Create a sketch of a list at lunch, see if you can compare teams close to each other in close matches (if team A, B, and C are all next to each other in the list and all play in four matches, have one guy watch them during their respective matches, then do a sub sort).

A number of teams already do the above, in addition to the 6+data compiler scouting teams. The only thing if you do this is that the 2-5 people should be the same 2-5 people all day, not 2-5 who switch off with pit crew*. Like designing robots, it's better to have a few experienced scouts than a lot of okay scouts. If you have the same few scouts running the team the whole season, you will all get better at it by the time champs rolls around.

*If pit crew has input about how certain teams work with your team or suspect failure points in other machines, take it into consideration.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by Sam_Mills

I would highly recommend any method of scouting that is not this. Championships are lost and won on scouting, and quantitative data is extremely important. (4334 for example would not have been a "gut" pick in 2012, but its a choice that got The Eh Team a division win)

What quantitative data would lead 1114/2056 to pick 4334? I suspect they were picked because they were very thin (to allow for easier triple balance), well driven and dependable. At least in my opinion, those are more qualitative measures opposed to quantitive. I'm not saying quantititative data isn't important, but how qualitative data is also necessary.

[Sam_Mills]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

What quantitative data would lead 1114/2056 to pick 4334? I suspect they were picked because they were very thin (to allow for easier triple balance), well driven and dependable. At least in my opinion, those are more qualitative measures opposed to quantitive. I'm not saying quantititative data isn't important, but how qualitative data is also necessary.

Qualitative scouting is undoubtedly important, as is pit scouting, but especially at larger events where there are close decisions to be made, numbers are going to be the best answer.

Regarding the 1114/2056/4334 alliance (warning: *some* blind conjecture ahead) yes, they were well driven, dependable and thin, but there are elements to consider that can't be answered without numbers. 1114 and 2056 would be taking a gamble by having only 2 robots that could shoot when facing alliances of 3 if they didn't do their homework. With good scouting data, you can look at how much higher robots scored compared to their averages when they had 4334 feeding them. If shooters score an average of 2 more cycles when they have 4334, then it would be worth choosing 4334 over any robot that scores an average of 2 cycles or fewer. By self scouting, they can also put together hypothetical alliances and estimate not only their expected match score, but also the standard deviation of scores of different alliances (high standard deviation = higher risk/higher score ceiling). Lacking this information means you can't make decisions about things like your ceiling vs your average, or what your opponents are likely to be scoring. This is a very condensed version, but there is a lot more that can be gleaned from good scouting data than what I said here.

I have never won a world championship though, so if anything I put up is wrong and can be corrected by someone who has, I welcome it.