District Championship Projections

[MikeE]

I feel these suggested points thresholds are rather high.
To take the New England District as an example, 32 teams have now played both their scored events. If we just rank those 32 teams and cut the list at the same proportion that will go to District Champs (60 of 175) then we see that the 11th team has 70 points.
So if we assume that teams completing their two scoring events by week 3 are performing as a whole close to average, then the District Champ invitation threshold should be around 70 points.

However, as pointed out in previous years, teams that compete in their second event early tend to do much better than average since they are at a distinct advantage over other teams competing for the first time. We see this trend again, since the average score for all NE teams in their first event is 26.5pts, whereas the average for 2nd event teams is 36.0pts. This pattern is seen in all Districts at the end of Week 3. (There is also an argument that better teams compete early, but it has the same effect on the District Champs point threshold.)

District	Event 1		Event 2	
	#teams	#teams	Average	#teams	Average
FiM	327	303	25.3	49	31.0
IN	 49	 49	27.4	15	33.6
MAR	121	 98	26.3	11	35.9
NE	175	168	26.5	32	36.0
PNW	152	145	28.5	43	33.1

By the end of the season the averages for 2nd events are actually expected to be a little lower than 1st event averages, since teams are often also competing against non-point-scoring 3rd event teams at later events which reduces the points pool. So 2nd event scores will become progressively lower on average from Week 4 onward.

Therefore we can conclude that 70pts is highly likely an overestimate of the points needed to qualify for the NE District Champs. My current estimate is 63pts.

[Brandon_L]

There are differences in the amount of district points teams are getting according to the blue alliance and the district ranking website. Am I correct to assume that the district ranking website would have the correct point value?

Example - 2495 has 21 points at chestnut hill according to http://frc-districtrankings.usfirst.org/MAR but according to TBA has 24 points.

[Jscout11]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

There are differences in the amount of district points teams are getting according to the blue alliance and the district ranking website. Am I correct to assume that the district ranking website would have the correct point value?

Example - 2495 has 21 points at chestnut hill according to http://frc-districtrankings.usfirst.org/MAR but according to TBA has 24 points.

The district ranking site has the correct values.

[Nathan Streeter]

Based on the current rankings, projecting points earned Week 5 based on past performance, and the fact that there are 9 teams who will be competing who won't be acruing points, I'm going to guess that the threshold for New England qualification is going to be 67pts, if there are 54 teams going to NE Championships. Obviously if several teams decline attendance that might come down.

[rwodonnell]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

Based on the current rankings, projecting points earned Week 5 based on past performance, and the fact that there are 9 teams who will be competing who won't be acruing points, I'm going to guess that the threshold for New England qualification is going to be 67pts, if there are 54 teams going to NE Championships. Obviously if several teams decline attendance that might come down.

I hope this is much closer to the real cutoff (we're at 69 points) and I really think it is. Not only are there 9 teams competing whose points won't count, as you said, but there is one team (236) who is already at 73 points, and another 4 teams who have won Chairman's awards. That's really 14 teams (11 in Hartford alone) whose points don't matter for those teams trying to reach the unknown threshold (assuming that threshold is under the 73 points team 236 already has.)

By the way, I thought there were going to be 60 invitations this year.

[Nathan Streeter]

Originally Posted by rwodonnell

I hope this is much closer to the real cutoff (we're at 69 points) and I really think it is. Not only are there 9 teams competing whose points won't count, as you said, but there is one team (236) who is already at 73 points, and another 4 teams who have won Chairman's awards. That's really 14 teams (11 in Hartford alone) whose points don't matter for those teams trying to reach the unknown threshold (assuming that threshold is under the 73 points team 236 already has.)

By the way, I thought there were going to be 60 invitations this year.

Certainly there are several factors that may bring that cutoff down below the 70pt mark...

I have no idea what the invitation count will be... I've tried looking around for it but have come up empty-handed. Battlecry has gone up above 54 teams in recent years, but I figured keeping my guess based on a 54-team list would be safe. If it bumps up to 60 teams, then that obviously brings the point threshold down by probably 1-3 points from whatever it would be.

[gafftron]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

Certainly there are several factors that may bring that cutoff down below the 70pt mark...

I have no idea what the invitation count will be... I've tried looking around for it but have come up empty-handed. Battlecry has gone up above 54 teams in recent years, but I figured keeping my guess based on a 54-team list would be safe. If it bumps up to 60 teams, then that obviously brings the point threshold down by probably 1-3 points from whatever it would be.

The invitation counts are actually posted in the Admin manual:

7.4.3 District Championship
Number of teams attending District Championship
FiM .................................................. .................................................. ......... 102
IN................................................ .................................................. ................ 32
MAR .................................................. .................................................. ......... 55
NE .................................................. .................................................. ............ 60
PNW............................................... .................................................. ............ 64

So it looks like WPI will be hosting 60 teams for the NE Championship.

[Nathan Streeter]

Originally Posted by gafftron

The invitation counts are actually posted in the Admin manual:

So it looks like WPI will be hosting 60 teams for the NE Championship.

Oops... I usually pride myself on familiarity with the manual too! :-/

In that case, I'm expecting the cutoff to be 65 points... +/- 1 pt. We'll see on Sunday, I guess!

[Mr V]

The "official" projection to qualify for the PNW DCMP is 58 points.

[PVCpirate]

Here's what I got using my method:

WEEK 4 PROJECTIONS
Michigan: ↓   53 points
Indiana:  ↓   42 points(complete)
PNW:     ↓    47 points
MAR:     ↑    70 points
New England: ↓ 56 points

Honestly I think these are pretty useless this week, Michigan, PNW and New England all look too low and MAR looks too high. Figured I would do them anyway for continuity or something.

[Link07]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

Here's what I got using my method:

WEEK 4 PROJECTIONS
Michigan: ↓   53 points
Indiana:  ↓   42 points(complete)
PNW:     ↓    47 points
MAR:     ↑    70 points
New England: ↓ 56 points

Honestly I think these are pretty useless this week, Michigan, PNW and New England all look too low and MAR looks too high. Figured I would do them anyway for continuity or something.

I haven't run any numbers or projections myself, but I think I can say with confidence that 70 is too high for MAR.

[Orthofort]

I did a projection just for Michigan by giving each team that haven't played 2 events the same score they got in the first event and I got 64-66, depending on how good the teams are that haven't played any events yet. Because of this, I estimate for Michigan it will be 64, maybe 65. FYI I did this using the numbers on the official FIRST ranking page, because I noticed TBA wasn't calculating qualification points correctly.

What method are you using to get 53 for Michigan? I cannot see the point values being that low.

Also I could do the same for the other districts if there is interest.

[SoftwareBug2.0]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

Here's what I got using my method:

WEEK 4 PROJECTIONS
Michigan: ↓   53 points
Indiana:  ↓   42 points(complete)
PNW:     ↓    47 points
MAR:     ↑    70 points
New England: ↓ 56 points

Honestly I think these are pretty useless this week, Michigan, PNW and New England all look too low and MAR looks too high. Figured I would do them anyway for continuity or something.

Yeah, I hate to pile on but the number for the PNW cutoff is not a good guess. The PNW district championship is a 64 team event and the 64th most points right now is already at 47.

[Andy A.]

For anyone who hadn't noticed yet, NEDC qualified teams are now indicated on the leaderboard at http://frc-districtrankings.usfirst.org/NE . The point cut off was 66.

Incidentally, three cheers to FIRST for the leaderboard site! It's a fantastic tool; fast to update, easy to navigate, easy to understand. After years of struggling with the typical FIRST web based tools this was a breath of fresh air.

[PVCpirate]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

There are differences in the amount of district points teams are getting according to the blue alliance and the district ranking website. Am I correct to assume that the district ranking website would have the correct point value?

Example - 2495 has 21 points at chestnut hill according to http://frc-districtrankings.usfirst.org/MAR but according to TBA has 24 points.

I noticed this too, I think the issue is that TBA isn't calculating the ranking points correctly. During the UNH district, they were reporting 12 ranking points for teams at the bottom who should get something like 4 points.