[FRC Blog] Frank Answers Friday: Championship Slots

[jajabinx124]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

Or give EI to the best engineered robot, which is likely one of the be one of the best on the field. There isn't a simple solution like there is with Districts.

If they were to give EI to the best engineered robot, they would have to change the definition of the award Engineering Inspiration. Right now it celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a team’s school and community.

Maybe your saying make the Excellence In Engineering award qualify a robot to worlds too?

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by BMSOTM

My proposed solution is three-pronged:

• Replace Finalist alliance position with district points for Wildcard distribution. This creates a system that can scale to include more than three teams, including those not on the Finalist alliance.
• If a team declines a CMP spot, pass a wildcard down the district points rankings until all spots are filled. The Stand Points Model was created to be an ideal assessment of team performance, so it seems perfect for this.
• Distribute extra Wildcard slots, which I call Bonus Slots, to large regionals. It seems silly to me that the 31-team Waterloo Regional and the 66-team Palmetto Regional qualify the same number of teams for CMP. This can be done by awarding the remaining "waitlist" slots to regionals based on the number of teams attending minus a certain value, which I used 40 for. While this doesn't create a strictly geographic distribution, it would be a much better approximation than the current system.

I put together a Google Spreadsheet demonstrating my proposal.

Personally, I really like this idea. You can use the district point system to rank teams at a regional event based on their performance (at that event only). Give the initial 6 slots to the winners, RA, CA, and EI, then any additional slots to the top X teams at the event, based on the event size. So a 30 team regional might just get those first 6 slots, while a 60 team regional would get 12. Obviously, the numbers would need to be tweaked accordingly each year, as they are now for districts, but it would completely solve the problem we currently have in MN - 4 60-team events at 12 teams per event would be 48 teams, and some of those would go to Wisconsin, Iowa, the Dakota's, or whoever else comes here to play.

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

Make it another judge's award. "Best on Field Robot Performance" or something along those lines. Or give EI to the best engineered robot, which is likely one of the be one of the best on the field. There isn't a simple solution like there is with Districts.

Why isn't there? The district point system can be adopted to a single event format easily, in order to give points to teams at that event based on robot and award performance.

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Why isn't there? The district point system can be adopted to a single event format easily, in order to give points to teams at that event based on robot and award performance.

In a fairly large amount of cases, this would just qualify the first two robots on the winning and finalist alliances. Right now, a massive chunk of points come from getting picked high and going far. Culture changing awards points would need to be rebalanced to work in a single event format. Someone could run numbers and see how things would pan out.

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by Knufire

In a fairly large amount of cases, this would just qualify the first two robots on the winning and finalist alliances. Right now, a massive chunk of points come from getting picked high and going far. Culture changing awards points would need to be rebalanced to work in a single event format. Someone could run numbers and see how things would pan out.

Those are usually the four robots that I'm most interested in seeing compete at the Championship level. I'm a fan of any system that sends those four.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

I've judged at an event, and I wouldn't trust Judges to pick the "best robot".

They aren't supposed to.

And most of the times judges don't get to watch many of the matches.

[Brian Maher]

Originally Posted by Knufire

In a fairly large amount of cases, this would just qualify the first two robots on the winning and finalist alliances. Right now, a massive chunk of points come from getting picked high and going far. Culture changing awards points would need to be rebalanced to work in a single event format. Someone could run numbers and see how things would pan out.

I took a look at District Rankings for the North Brunswick District Event:

Points 	Team	Selection	Finish	Awards
73	303	1 Capt		W	Winner, Inn. in Cont.
72	2590	1 First		W	Winner, Entr.
60	11	2 Capt		F	Finalist, Judges'
51	193	2 First		F	Finalist
48	4285	3 Capt		SF	Exc in Eng
46	1923	5 First		SF	Chairman's
46	25	3 First		SF	Creativity
46	3340	1 Second	W	Winner
44	869	5 Capt		SF	Quality
43	1257	2 Second	F	Finalist, Spirit, Safety
36	4954	4 Capt		QF	Ind Des
33	5666	5 Second	SF	RAS
33	3314	7 Capt		SF	EI
31	219	4 First		QF
...

If District Events were regionals, CMP qualification would look something like this:

Winners: 303 (prequalified, Mount Olive Chairman's), 2590 (Montreal Winner), 3340
CA: 1923 (prequalified, TVR EI)
EI: 3314
RAS: 5666

Generating 3 wild cards:
Current System: 11, 193, 1257
District points: 11, 193, 4285

Looking at the OPR for that event, 4285 averaged ~43 points per match, and 1257 ~21 points per match. Using district points for wildcards sends a slightly different but more competitive set of teams to CMP.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

They aren't supposed to.

And most of the times judges don't get to watch many of the matches.

Agreed. I wasn't criticizing the people, it's just that the process isn't currently setup to identify the best robots (as that's not the current goal of the process). Identifying the best robot would require a large shift, or addition of more judges, to allow substantial match view time by more than a single judge or two.

[Ginger Power]

Originally Posted by Nemo

Those are usually the four robots that I'm most interested in seeing compete at the Championship level. I'm a fan of any system that sends those four.

Agreed. My only concern with any such system is that you take all the competition out of the finals. If everybody is guaranteed to go to champs you're basically playing an exhibition match. If you weighted the points such that only the winning alliance's 3rd robot also got to go that would be way more intriguing.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

They aren't supposed to.

And most of the times judges don't get to watch many of the matches.

I had a student complain to me once that since most judges weren't FRC people, they generally didn't know how to objectively judge for awards.

And I just said "That's the point." Having judges do what they do isn't about objectively determining who the "Innovation in Controls" award winner should be- it's about exposing industry leaders who are often judges to these amazing students and exposing these students to industry leaders.

Ex: I talk to Team A and Team B, and Team A's students tell me in detail about their sloppy control system for their mechanism, while Team B wins the regional with their tightly and highly controlled mechanism but can't discuss it with the judges. I, as an FRC person who understands what these students are doing, might still award the award to the winning team, whereas an outsider judge will award it to the team who can talk about what they built better. That is (I think) an intentional part of the system. I place more focus on results, whereas a non-FRC person will place more emphasis on the attempt and the innovation than the results, while also learning about what FIRST-er's do.

I think the main problem with the regional system is when finalists aren't invited to championships or when the second best robot at an event loses in the semifinals because they were on the wrong side of the bracket or something.

What if (bold idea), before week 7, FIRST polls a number of experts on who the best 20 or so teams to not make championships are (kind of like this, but two weeks earlier) and invites them to the championship event.

[Brian Maher]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

Agreed. My only concern with any such system is that you take all the competition out of the finals. If everybody is guaranteed to go to champs you're basically playing an exhibition match. If you weighted the points such that only the winning alliance's 3rd robot also got to go that would be way more intriguing.

From my experience in a district, I've noticed that there tends to be one or two captain/first pick semifinalists that outrank the second pick winner, and a few more semifinalists that outrank the second pick finalist.

[Ginger Power]

Originally Posted by BMSOTM

From my experience in a district, I've noticed that there tends to be one or two captain/first pick semifinalists that outrank the second pick winner, and a few more semifinalists that outrank the second pick finalist.

I'm not as familiar with the district system, but I thought this would be the case. That's why I suggested manipulating the points so that winning the event is more valuable. Although the system works well as is, and just adds more incentive to strive for safety, and spirit awards to push your team over the top.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

What if (bold idea), before week 7, FIRST polls a number of experts on who the best 20 or so teams to not make championships are (kind of like this, but two weeks earlier) and invites them to the championship event.

That, I think, would be one of the best ideas. Let's expand towards original intent of the question.

1) FIRST polls experts on best 50 teams to not CURRENTLY make championships. (Trust me, there's a reason this number is so high.) This happens sometime around Week 6.
2) FIRST looks at who still has a chance to qualify (playing Week 7, maybe playing Week 6), or is near the top of the waitlist. These teams are set aside.
3) FIRST looks at geography and representation. Teams from underrepresented areas get higher priority than teams that are from fully represented areas.
4) The combined "best teams" and "underrepresented areas' teams" sorts determine the order of offering--but only to the top 25 on the combined list.
5) After Week 7 plays, the list is revisited. The bottom 25 and the teams that were set aside are now eligible for invites.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by EricH

That, I think, would be one of the best ideas. Let's expand towards original intent of the question.

1) FIRST polls experts on best 50 teams to not CURRENTLY make championships. (Trust me, there's a reason this number is so high.) This happens sometime around Week 6.
2) FIRST looks at who still has a chance to qualify (playing Week 7, maybe playing Week 6), or is near the top of the waitlist. These teams are set aside.
3) FIRST looks at geography and representation. Teams from underrepresented areas get higher priority than teams that are from fully represented areas.
4) The combined "best teams" and "underrepresented areas' teams" sorts determine the order of offering--but only to the top 25 on the combined list.
5) After Week 7 plays, the list is revisited. The bottom 25 and the teams that were set aside are now eligible for invites.

If 2 teams are on equal standing, why should where they are from set them apart? If a team is from an area that has more "better" teams, why should that hurt their chances of making it?

[Brian Maher]

Originally Posted by BMSOTM

I took a look at District Rankings for the North Brunswick District Event:
...
Winners: 303 (prequalified, Mount Olive Chairman's), 2590 (Montreal Winner), 3340
CA: 1923 (prequalified, TVR EI)
EI: 3314
RAS: 5666

Generating 3 wild cards:
Current System: 11, 193, 1257
District points: 11, 193, 4285

I just remembered that 3340 declined their DCMP invite. In our hypothetical regional, let's assume they'd decline a CMP invite. Using the district point wildcard system, this would qualify 25. Without this system, the extra slot would go unused, with three wildcards generated already.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by dodar

If 2 teams are on equal standing, why should where they are from set them apart? If a team is from an area that has more "better" teams, why should that hurt their chances of making it?

To be fair, the district system does this already. Lets say district A had 250 teams and 50 of them are really good, while district B also has 250 teams, but only 20 of them are really good. District A might not be able to send all of their good teams, while district B gets to send a number of not as good teams to championships anyway.

Any sort of equal representation system based on region will do this, and that's (I think) an unavoidable problem, albeit a lesser problem compared to how championship slots are currently allocated to regionals.