Chairmen's and Engineering Inspiration in PNW - Overlapping Teams

[crichards]

Hey!

So this year my team, 3786, won EI at the Auburn Mtn. district event in PNW. When preparing for our presentation at the District Champs, we kept a running spreadsheet of teams that had won EI and Chairman's. During this, we discovered that about 1/4 of the teams that win chairman's also win EI.

At the District Championship, all the winners of both Chairman's and EI had won the Chairman's award at some point that year. My team was awarded the Judges award for our Pre-FLL Curriculum and other outreach efforts. It striked us as strange, and I decided to do some research. So, I looked at 2014-2016 data and discovered a rise in the number of teams winning both, relative to number of awards available.

Here's the spreadsheet

The whole situation is interesting to me, and I wanted to get your guys' opinion on it. I'm thinking of looking at more districts to get a wider set of data and see if the trend continues.

Edit: I also want to specify that this is nothing against any teams, I think all the teams that won both Chairman's and EI are incredible and inspirational. I'm just looking at the trend in a purely analytical sense.

[Hallry]

Figured I'd point out that both PNW DCMP EI winners (4125 and 3574) won Chairman's at their first district event and EI at their second. Also, just so you're aware, it's the Chairman's Award, not Chairmen's.

You might be interested in this previous thread: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=148119

[jtrv]

Interesting. I've always seen Chairman's and EI to be relatively similar in nature. No one has ever really given me a description that describes the two in such a way that there isn't clear overlap between the criteria for winning.

[sanddrag]

The only distinction I"be heard is EI is about what you do for yourselves, Chairman's is about what you do for others. Not sure how accurate that is though.

[Jon Stratis]

According to the manual, EI guidelines are (section 6.14.7.1):

■ Extent and inventiveness of the team’s efforts to recruit students to engineering with particular emphasis on the most recent year’s efforts. Measurable success of those efforts.
■ Extent and effectiveness of the team’s community outreach efforts with particular emphasis on the most recent year’s efforts. Measurable success of those efforts.
■ A commitment to science and technology education among the team, school, and community.
■ Achievement of the FIRST mission and ability to communicate that at the competition and away from it.
■ Efforts are ongoing, not strictly concentrated on the build and competition season.

While Chairman's is summed up as (section 6.5.4):

The Chairman’s Award is presented to the team judged to have created the best partnership effort among team participants and which best exemplified the true meaning of FIRST through measurable impact on its participants, school, and community at large.

Those two really do go together closely.