Split Champs assignment

[Pault]

Honestly, I think that FIRST is really lucky that the 2 Super Regionals aren't even more uneven. At least there is a pretty even split with TX/CA going to Houston and ON/MI going to STL/Detroit. I could easily see a world where all the best teams are all in one half, especially considering how FIRST has a much longer history in Super Regional North territory.

[evanperryg]

I've kept a list of alliance partners and other teams I've been fortunate to interact with over the last few years, and it's disheartening to think that I won't see many of those teams ever again. Many of the teams I have found most inspirational, most impressive, and most exciting to watch will be in Houston next year. I'm well aware that FIRST doesn't read CD, at least not thoroughly enough to notice this post, but FIRST, you made a mistake.

This isn't about seeing awesome robots, this is about seeing the awesome people. Now that I'm not a student anymore, I figured I'd finally have the freedom to roam the pits more, and talk to more of the amazing people who I've only ever gotten to talk to briefly. I was hoping to talk more with a few of the people I had met down at the Arkansas regional this year, but now they're all heading to Texas.

I hope that someday we'll see a return to a single world championship, but for now I'll hold dearly the memories I've made from the final four real world championships.

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by Edxu

I'm for this as well. As a strategist, I usually meet with my Drive Team 4-5 matches beforehand to detail what we're doing, and at events with short turnarounds *cough waterloo cough*, sometimes the teams that I talk with have a match right before the match that we play with them, making it very difficult to plan matches in advance.

One of the (very few) downsides of districts from a drive team standpoint: you never get time to relax.

[wjordan]

I wrote a script to try and compare the north champs to the south champs based on historical OPR, and here's what I found:

Here's percentile OPR at worlds for North teams and South teams:

Year	North			South		
	50th	75th	90th	50th	75th	90th
2004	44.82	56.59	70.47	32.14	46.97	64.60
2005	12.83	17.79	23.67	10.81	16.22	22.81
2006	15.20	23.38	33.03	12.39	19.94	27.46
*2007	-0.28	54.96	168.85	25.63	130.43	203.00
2008	21.51	32.25	41.92	17.10	25.05	36.73
2009	25.10	33.25	40.10	21.26	28.47	35.08
2010	2.22	3.81	4.90	1.91	3.27	4.32
2011	24.20	36.37	45.73	17.40	30.86	42.72
2012	13.20	18.38	25.27	9.90	16.53	25.58
2013	37.46	52.15	65.85	31.86	44.29	63.19
2014	51.69	68.34	85.10	46.57	62.57	81.38
2015	41.17	57.61	72.64	34.29	53.06	69.58
2016	37.20	45.28	54.27	31.66	40.23	49.52

And here's South OPR as a percent of North OPR at each percentile:

	50th	75th	90th
2004	71.71%	82.99%	91.67%
2005	84.25%	91.18%	96.34%
2006	81.54%	85.28%	83.14%
*2007	-9034%	237.31%	120.23%
2008	79.51%	77.66%	87.64%
2009	84.70%	85.62%	87.47%
2010	86.35%	85.76%	88.11%
2011	71.91%	84.85%	93.41%
2012	75.01%	89.97%	101.26%
2013	85.05%	84.93%	95.97%
2014	90.10%	91.56%	95.64%
2015	83.30%	92.11%	95.79%
2016	85.12%	88.84%	91.24%

A graph over time is attached. Based on this, I think it's pretty clear that the North champs is going to be the stronger event over Houston. While the top 10% of teams are fairly close between them, it's the North's much stronger middle tier that brings up the quality of play. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the North is mostly teams from districts, which have a tendency to improve the middle-tier teams over the regional model. The gap between the two regions has also stayed pretty consistent, despite the rise of powerful western teams such as 987 and 1678.

* I wasn't around for 2007, but does anyone know why the OPRs for that year are so out of whack?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by wjordan

* I wasn't around for 2007, but does anyone know why the OPRs for that year are so out of whack?

Exponential scoring, or I miss my guess. A particularly good team could place 8-9 scoring objects in the match, but whether they got 16 or 256 points for 'em depended a lot on WHERE they placed 'em and where the other alliance placed theirs.

Then there was the end-game bonus--dedicated ramp bots could be worth 0-60 points depending on how good their defense was and how good at climbing the ramps their partners were.

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by EricH

Exponential scoring, or I miss my guess. A particularly good team could place 8-9 scoring objects in the match, but whether they got 16 or 256 points for 'em depended a lot on WHERE they placed 'em and where the other alliance placed theirs.

Then there was the end-game bonus--dedicated ramp bots could be worth 0-60 points depending on how good their defense was and how good at climbing the ramps their partners were.

And today we've learned that exponential scoring does not play nice with algorithms that assume linearity. Whodathunk!

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

And today we've learned that exponential scoring does not play nice with algorithms that assume linearity. Whodathunk!

#thisiswhywedothemath

[vikesrock777]

Originally Posted by EricH

Exponential scoring, or I miss my guess. A particularly good team could place 8-9 scoring objects in the match, but whether they got 16 or 256 points for 'em depended a lot on WHERE they placed 'em and where the other alliance placed theirs.

Then there was the end-game bonus--dedicated ramp bots could be worth 0-60 points depending on how good their defense was and how good at climbing the ramps their partners were.

I wasn't around back then, but wasn't that also the year of the weird experimental match balancing algorithm? Could that also be messing with the quality of OPR data?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by vikesrock777

I wasn't around back then, but wasn't that also the year of the weird experimental match balancing algorithm? Could that also be messing with the quality of OPR data?

Uh... Yep.

And probably not.


The "match balancing algorithm" AKA "NOT YOU GUYS AGAIN", for the uninitiated, was an attempt to "balance" matches. Top third of team numbers had one on each side of the field. Bottom third had one on each side of the field. Middle third... You get the idea. Unfortunately for the algorithm designers, that just so happened to be 2056's rookie year... And most events didn't have the depth that they could get away with it. It didn't take long for teams to raise a stink.

The problem is that it was even(ly bad) across everybody, so I don't think it'd affect OPR that much.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

I wonder if the timing of the Vex Champs will have an impact on which event IFI sponsored teams will want to attend.

Looks like most of the NASA teams are headed south.

How many matches will teams expect to play?

They'll probably only do 10 but they should do 12. They could keep the eight fields and just do the MSC thing and bounce them back and forth between the two fields even and odd numbered matches til they reach 204 completed matches with 102 teams each getting a dozen matches to play.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by wjordan

The applet has NC teams going to STL / DET when they should be headed for HOU.
Otherwise, a useful tool, thanks!

The problem is that you used 900... We break everything.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by EricH

Exponential scoring, or I miss my guess. A particularly good team could place 8-9 scoring objects in the match, but whether they got 16 or 256 points for 'em depended a lot on WHERE they placed 'em and where the other alliance placed theirs.

Ah, so just like Recycle Rush.

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

Ah, so just like Recycle Rush.

Recycle rush was more of a multiplier in the Garbage Can with Rack n' Roll you had it based on how long a row you could create scored based on 2 to the power of the length of the row so basically starting with a row of 1 it went: 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256. Then add in an end game that required two robots, one with a specific design element and you make it a math nightmare.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by wjordan

* I wasn't around for 2007, but does anyone know why the OPRs for that year are so out of whack?

Beyond the exponential scoring already mentioned, the scheduling algorithm did not play kindly with OPR, as the three "bins" (old teams, middle teams, young teams) were never mixed.

Originally Posted by EricH

The problem is that it was even(ly bad) across everybody, so I don't think it'd affect OPR that much.

It impacts the math involved in calculating OPR, as you've essentially divided each event into three bins.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Why even go a weak Championship?

Conferences? Sponsor and scholarship presentations? It's not just about the robots.