Ranking by Median Score

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

Let me start off by saying that this year's ranking system is generally one of the best we've had in a while at making sure the top teams are at the top. However this past weekend, my team was ranked in the top 8, then had two bad freak matches, and ended up near the 20th seed due to those two matches being factored into our average score.

I think an even better representation of robot ability would be the median score. This would cause rankings to still decrease and increase when your team has a good or bad match, but punishes teams much less for some freak accident (like a programming issue that caused the forks on our elevator to oscillate open and closed for the entire match.)

What does CD think? I can see a few problems with the game becoming fundamentally different, but I don't think an argument like that holds a lot of weight.

I'd also love to see one of you statistical wizards showing how that would have affected rankings at some events.
Thanks!

I was thinking of going the other way to solve this problem. In some ways this year's game is too stable in the rankings. Once a team gets to the second day, they aren't going to change their ranking much. It doesn't really allow for a late charge to the top which can make this more interesting.

So instead the ranking could be based on the best 5 performances (or 50%). A bad match will be thrown out, but a good match can move a team up quite a bit. The rankings could be quite reshuffled the second day.