Scouting: Quantitative vs. Qualitative Poll

[Oblarg]

The problem with quantitative scouting is that it's prone to suffering from "garbage in, garbage out" while simultaneously looking trustworthy and reliable.

We humans have a tendency to give undue weight to numerical values simply because they are numerical values, without really putting much thought into where they came from and how meaningful they actually are. In my experience, I've found that, at least in FRC, qualitative impressions of a robot are quite a bit better than attempts to quantify performance.

Granted, there are some useful numerical scouting tools. OPR works reasonably well for offense in many games, for example. However, there's simply so much information that is clear to an astute observer that can't be easily quantified, and throwing it out simply because you can't quantify it is unwise.