Tableau at PNW Districts

[*Rachelle*]

Originally Posted by Sunnykx

This is probably more information than you wanted but I am hoping others might find it helpful, too. Each team needs to do what works best for them and we are always looking to improve.

Thank you, it is awesome to be told that we are being noticed. Random fact about our team, we've always been in the position where we become a captain or don't go to elims at all. So not our first time as that 8th seed captain, it would have ended that streak We've been 8th captain from 9th seed, 11th, and now 15th seed.

This isn't too much info at all! I love to see how other teams do their scouting in order to compare our system and see what we can improve and where we are doing well.

Lobbying is probably the one thing we have never really done, obviously this worked well for you to 2522, is this something we should put a little more focus to in your opinion?

Our scouting meeting system is quite similar, we try to start with our "do not picks" first in order to narrow it down. That does mean that once in while a team will get bumped up later on. In the morning we mainly look for major improvements, to see if anyone is breaking, and if there are any broken ones that we could potentially help get fixed in time for an elim match.

One thing I do like about the paper scouting is it helps keeps us moving at 1am during the meeting shuffling papers versus staring at a screen. I'll PM you an email, I would definitely like to see your Tableau setup.

I was also curious if you (or other teams if you're reading) do any pre-competition scouting? We look for performances in the last couple of years, alliances, and other team info. For our second competition I try to add how the teams did in their first event. (A lot of it is condensed from The Blue Alliance).

Thank you for sharing!

[Sunnykx]

Team 3663 Data.docxRachelle,

I emailed you our Tableau packaged workbook from Mt. Vernon for you to get an idea what it looks like.

I've also attached a selection of our data here for everyone (as I mentioned in a previous post, I am unable to upload the packaged Tableau workbook on Chief Delphi because it is the wrong file type). In this Word doc, I have 4 different graphs. We used all of these graphs to lobby Team 3238 to pick us for their alliance. We are fairly new to lobbying as well. We tried it without success last year. We're getting better at it and have had two successes now this year. We make a dashboard that contains three or four graphs on it targeted towards how we complement the team we are lobbying.

The first graph is the distribution of points for each team. Team 3238 is clearly the highest in points. We are second with the 2nd highest goal points.

The second graph is a scatterplot of Total Tele Defenses vs. Tele Goal Points. I love scatterplots. They can really put things in perspective. Let's say you were Team 3681 and you were a captain of alliance #5. You have nice goal points but you don't breach much. While 2605 has nice goal points and you might be able to capture the tower with them, you still don't have a breacher. If you think there will be lots of breachers left by the time you get to make your third pick, you can afford to take 2605. If not, you may want to look at 1778, 2907, 4911, etc. You could figure out this without a scatterplot or Tableau, but Tableau makes it easier.

The third graph is one of my favorites. This shows the shooting locations of two of our top rivals for Team 3238's first pick. Team 3238 did not want to have to jockey with its alliance partner for shooting position. We showed them that we like to shoot in their position, but we had 4 places that we routinely shot from, with two of the places being unique to us.

Finally, we used the 4th graph for picking the 3rd robot. Team 3238 wanted a defensive robot but there weren't really any left that had done notable defense in qualification rounds. We knew that we also needed a robot who could cross in auto and challenge on the batter at the end. By the time we got to the 24th pick, Team 568 was the best choice. They did great in eliminations. While they only crossed in autonomous 60% of the time and challenged the batter 40% of the time in qualifications, in eliminations they crossed 100% of the time and challenged 80% of the time. They also did creditable defense.

You asked about preparing for competitions. We went in to Mt. Vernon with data on 30 of the 36 teams we were facing. We used that information until all of the teams had a few matches under their belts. We will do the same at District Championship, video-scouting teams' latest competitions and uploading the data into Tableau. Again, we'll change over to their performance at District Champs solely once we have data from a few matches.

Good luck at your next competition!