[FRC Blog] Two Championship Survey Results and Path Forward

[Michael Blake]

Originally Posted by Holtzman

Another way of looking at these results is that 55% oppose two championships, 12% are neutral, and only 33% favor two championships. To me, that’s is a much more powerful statement about how the community really feels.

BAZINGA.

And... it would be interesting to know of the 33% who favor two championships what percentage only competes at ONE competition?

[Green Potato]

From a statistics point of view, there is no way to control for the 2 big reasons why the results are NOT statistically on-par.

1. It's a voluntary internet poll. The results will always be skewed toward the extreme.
2. There was survey bias in the number of possible responses.

All in all, I feel that because of this, the results may be flawed, but there's one thing I can be certain of: the community responded negaitvely as a whole.

[Andrew Schreiber]

So, the big takeaway is that 50% of teams don't really care.

Well, at least that's not a surprise.

[scottandme]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

So what this data tells me is that a small number of teams really hate this idea and are very vocal about it. This seems to jive with what typically happens here on CD.

26% of respondents really, really, really hate the idea, and it's also the most popular answer. I wouldn't look at that as being a "small number" or insignificant.

Looking at the "important elements" - #1,#3, and #4 are all impossible or highly diluted by implementing 2 championships.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Engineers love data.





Raar. Too much data. By being exploratory, they're manipulating it!

[/s]

The survey itself was pretty manipulative. The options for the response would bias toward a positive trend, and options on why championships are important to teams were presented in a way that would present responses that would invalidate proposals like the festival/champs split.

But since you earned it:

[Siri]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

So what this data tells me is that a small number of teams really hate this idea and are very vocal about it. This seems to jive with what typically happens here on CD.

More than a quarter of the respondents are as against this proposal as it is possible to register on this scale. That's closed to 2,000 people in itself (numerically 1912.3 people). 55% of respondents are against the proposal; that's more than 4045 people. CD is vocal, but even assuming the relationship between CD and the survey sample (which is a weird assumption when n=7355), opposition by definition is not the minority opinion. And despite the scale shift, the "strongly opposed" outnumbers all those who voted 10, 9, and 8 combined. More people voted for 1 or 2 than voted for anything above 5.



Does anyone know if there's a standard method of "centering" a scale like this? (The true center is at 5.5, the average of 1 and 10). I don't have a statistical method of turning 4 buckets into 5, but I think the worst-case scenario would be that everyone who voted 1 would've voted 0, and everyone in 2 took 1 (no one votes 4). This creates a new weighted average of 3.92, which represents the low end of possibility: thus the average is somewhere between 3.92 and 4.47 when centered about 5. Did I handle that correctly?

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by scottandme

26% of respondents really, really, really hate the idea, and it's also the most popular answer.

That's the thing: 26% of RESPONDENTS don't like it. When they gave each team "1 vote," it was average out as favorable. Therefore, my statement stands. Certain groups don't like this new idea and were very vocal about it.

[Brandon Holley]

Stepping away from the scale metrics for favorability-

The #1, #3 and #4 choices for what people want most out of Championship are all negatively effected by a split Championship. I have to say that particular aspect is very unfortunate.

• Seeing and competing with the teams with the best robots in FRC
• The experience of attending a major, multi-day event with my team.
• Participating in a competition that identifies the best teams playing the game
• Seeing teams you have built relationships/partnerships with over the years

-Brando

[NotInControl]

FIRST this is a total failure in my opinion.

I stated this to some of the FIRST HQ representatives while at champs this year who were telling me to go fill out the survey.

What is the point of even having a survey, if contracts were signed for the venues before the survey or even this idea was announced?

The survey would just capture how the community felt about the decision, not influence the decision at all.

Furthermore, when going to two championships, I've heard speculation of possibly holding an official event where both championships alliances compete to have 1 world championship, to possibly rectify a majority of concerns.

In my opinion, this doesn't rectify anything, and in fact unless FRC picks up the travel bill for the teams, it punishes the winning alliances because their season is now extended, and they will most likely need to re-travel to wherever this new event takes place.

2016, were going to be doing everything possible to earn our way to championships, its going to be the end of an era.

P.S. I did fill out the survey even though I knew it had no real effect on the decision. And this data looks manipulated to the point of uselessness.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

Stepping away from the scale metrics for favorability-

The #1, #3 and #4 choices for what people want most out of Championship are all negatively effected by a split Championship. I have to say that particular aspect is very unfortunate.




-Brando

You know what answer to this question didn't even make the top ten?

Having the "full progression of programs" at one event. (I can't remember the exact wording)

Yet...

As we noted in the Championship informational session, the facts that there will be two Championships starting in 2017, and that all FIRST programs will be represented at each Championship, will not be changing, and so won’t be part of the discussions undertaken by these groups.

#priorities

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

That's the thing: 26% of RESPONDENTS don't like it. When they gave each team "1 vote," it was average out as favorable. Therefore, my statement stands. Certain groups don't like this new idea and were very vocal about it.

Except technically, On a scale of 1-10, 5.1 is negative. For the scale to be accurate, it would have to have 0-10 or 5.5 as the average "I don't care" response.

I'd love to see the raw data and make my own biased set of statistics too.

[Taylor]

This version of the data is much more illustrative to me than the bar graph.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-W...ew?usp=sharing

edit: apparently I don't know how to put a picture on this. Be assured this isn't a rickroll.

postedit: yes, I realize that's what a rickroller would type.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

You know what answer to this question didn't even make the top ten?

Having the "full progression of programs" at one event. (I can't remember the exact wording)

Yet...



#priorities

I'll be honest, AS IT HAS BEEN DONE IN THE PAST, I don't care about having the full progression of programs under the same roof. I didn't miss FTC at all at CMP this year. I noticed their lack of presence about as much as I've ever noticed their presence. (I'm biased as a former world festival FLL judge I've noticed their presence quite a bit)

The other programs have always been relegated to sideshow status and I don't care if that continues. In fact, I'd like to see it stopped. If they can't be granted real "participant" status then I'd rather they not be there.

Now, I'd like to have A championship that celebrates all the FIRST programs, the values of FIRST, and celebrates STEM.


Just a thought on why that ranked so low (at least in my mind)

[DCA Fan]

There's an old saying that goes something like "you can make statistics say anything...." That's what I feel like is happening here. The very long justification of favor/oppose is really just trying to find a way to beat the data into saying what you'd like it to say - and really they came very close.

Bear in mind, in surveys such as these, the people most likely to fill out the survey are people with an opinion on the issue, so it's not necessarily surprising that the largest number are in the "strongly oppose" camp, but I think that to have such a high number of respondents with the same viewpoint should be worth something. Should, but apparently, not so much - given that HQ remains committed to the two champs model.

What frustrates me is their continuation of being committed to the geographic lock - their intent to form committees isn't one of "how to allow teams to attend either championship" but exactly what they planned to do before the town hall - nothing's changed. I don't see a particular value in getting people outside HQ to show up and tell them what regions should go to what championship- unless somehow we're allowed to lobby for it and everyone lobbies to go to one or the other.

[BrennanB]

So the actual average (taking into account that people who care about the outcome of champs) aka not team per team basis is 4.47