[FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by gblake

Nah. Not so much.

Scoring points in matches is simply not the correct proxy/metric to use to gauge the success of FRC teams.

There are at least two kinds of people in the world. I am one kind.

Side note, I'm really, really growing weary of seeing the words "competitive" and "elite" in discussions like this. To me they are red flags. YMMV.

PS: I hope FIRST soon realizes the survey's results will be worse than useless. They will be harmful, not neutral or helpful.

Do you hope to contribute to the discussion or just $@#$@#$@#$@# on things other people post?

You state what is wrong and what is not the correct metric. What are the correct metrics then?

What are the two kinds of people in the world?

Sorry these amazing mentors want the FIRST Robotics Competition to be built around the notion of competition.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

...
[1] Yes GBlake, I view this as an important goal in itself, I'm not speaking to "success". I'm solely looking at methods of addressing teams that consistently miss eliminations. I have reasons for this and am more than willing to discuss them via PM if you'd like.

I have no problem with "competitiveness" used in the sense you did (and you don't need my permission anyway ).

The reason it has become a red flag for me (YMMV), is that the conversation here on CD almost always quickly moves to (or begins with) competing (with a high chance of success) for the blue banner, instead of focusing on being able to enjoy an event because you are able to join your colleagues in a match.

I had my first serious conversation about the distinction between the two possible meanings over a decade ago. That opened my eyes. There are definitely (at least) two slants to the way that word is used, and often people talk right past each other when they use it.

Blake

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by gblake

This is an old topic that is a magnet for specious arguments, and is a long dead horse; constantly rehashed here on CD by a tiny, egregiously-lopsided fraction of the total FRC participants.* I haven't spotted a single new idea or argument in this iteration of the conversation.**

Surely neither I nor any other proponents or opponents if SBD/etc.need to repeat what has already been said a zillion times before. Instead this entire thread should be just a collection of hyperlinks to past posts.

Just because you don't see value in this thread from atop your lofty perch doesn't mean the rest of us don't. The potential elimination of Stop Bag Day would be program altering and defining change, with potential impacts beyond what any of us can imagine. It's natural that people will want to discuss this at length, and it's important that they do so. FIRST just put out a survey to address this topic, yet you're telling the passionate participants of this program that they should stop discussing simply because you, a person who for all I can tell hasn't been a part of this program for over 10 years, don't like it? If I sound frustrated it's because I am. You repeatedly come into these discussions telling people how they should feel and that their opinions are simply wrong. It's one thing to have healthy disagreements, it's another to try and shutdown discussion. (Especially when it's adult on a forum directed at high school students.) So you may think the posters here are egregiously lopsided, but perhaps if you spent more time listening, and less time shouting people down, you might learn something from this thread. I know I have.

Thanks to everyone else on both sides of the coin who've shared their opinions. As stated above, this potential change would affect every single participant in this program. It's important that everyone makes sure their opinion and perspective is heard and understood.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Do you hope to contribute to the discussion or just $@#$@#$@#$@# on things other people post?

You state what is wrong and what is not the correct metric. What are the correct metrics then?

What are the two kinds of people in the world?

Sorry these amazing mentors want the FIRST Robotics Competition to be built around the notion of competition.

Take a breath Askash.

I try to take my cues from some amazing mentors named Woodie, Dean, and Dave. Furthermore, I try to listen carefully beyond the slogans and catch phrases. They purposefully created a program containing compromises, in which the desire to focus on competing is in tension with other goals, and they plainly asked all participants to avoid being seduced too much by the competition tool the program uses.

When I began in FRC, I was 100% focused on the competition. What I learned from Woodie, Dean, and Dave in my first year, taught me a different motivation.

Other people's experiences and thoughtful consideration of the same things I heard from W, D, and D, gave/give them their own motivations.

Joe's post said the paper is a home run. I said it isn't. I also offered that opinion without rehashing the still valid and invalid arguments on both sides of the topic. My reasons are already a matter of public record, and I hoped you would remember them. You were around when I wrote them.

I would delight in spending a day, face-to-face with respected CD friends, including Jim and Joe, untangling the hype that surrounds this subject, and subsequently putting together a funded plan that would separate symptoms from causes, would separate fact from fiction, and would recommend one path for improving FRC. Discussion threads aren't very useful for accomplishing that. They are a step along the path, but are nowhere near the finish.

Blake
What is the metric? Something along the lines of introducing students to enough positive STEM experiences to open their eyes to the possibility that they might enjoy a STEM career. To do that you don't even need to have competitions. You might choose to use competitions, but they aren't required.
Who are the two kinds of people? Those who agree with the motivations and conclusions of Jim's write-up, and those who don't. It's by no means a slam dunk that the paper's methods, conclusions, or recommendations are irrefutable or best. Reasonable people can and do disagree (see some other posts in this thread). Jim is reasonable. I think I am too.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Karthik

Just because you don't see value in this thread from atop your lofty perch doesn't mean the rest of us don't. The potential elimination of Stop Bag Day would be program altering and defining change, with potential impacts beyond what any of us can imagine. It's natural that people will want to discuss this at length, and it's important that they do so. FIRST just put out a survey to address this topic, yet you're telling the passionate participants of this program that they should stop discussing simply because you, a person who for all I can tell hasn't been a part of this program for over 10 years, don't like it? If I sound frustrated it's because I am. You repeatedly come into these discussions telling people how they should feel and that their opinions are simply wrong. It's one thing to have healthy disagreements, it's another to try and shutdown discussion. (Especially when it's adult on a forum directed at high school students.) So you may think the posters here are egregiously lopsided, but perhaps if you spent more time listening, and less time shouting people down, you might learn something from this thread. I know I have.

Thanks to everyone else on both sides of the coin who've shared their opinions. As stated above, this potential change would affect every single participant in this program. It's important that everyone makes sure their opinion and perspective is heard and understood.

Kathik - From my lofty perch I challenged authors (the frequent flyers know who they are) to contribute something new rather than bang their old drums loudly. With respect, the discussion would benefit from that. - Blake

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Karthik

....

Originally Posted by gblake

Kathik - From my lofty perch I challenged authors (the frequent flyers know who they are) to contribute something new rather than bang their old drums loudly. With respect, the discussion would benefit from that. - Blake

And yet you have contributed nothing.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Even if we suppose that there is currently a correlation between OPR and team retention (which I have some dispute with, at least until more data is released), that doesn't mean that correlation will carry forwards if you take steps to increase OPR. That is to say, the concept of eliminating bag day to raise OPR of teams doesn't mean that fewer teams will fold since we have yet to establish a causal relationship between OPR and team attrition. If teams are folding from a variety of other stressors (under funding/under mentorship/no school support/burn out/etc), raising their OPR will not save those teams from folding.

To put it another way, basing actions purely on the correlation is treating a symptom, not the disease.

I completely agree. We can't know that the correlation between OPR and team retention will hold if/when we change fundamental aspects of FRC. I thought that I had made that clear.

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

We can disagree about how specific policies will impact OPR distributions, team retention rates, or the correlation between the two, but at the present time, OPR does indeed seem to be a reasonable proxy for a given FRC team's success.

I was responding to this statement:

Originally Posted by gblake

Scoring points in matches is simply not the correct proxy/metric to use to gauge the success of FRC teams.

I am fully 100% aware that correlation is not causation. However, gblake is going a step further by essentially denying that any correlation even exists in the present. This correlation could very well be diminished if we eliminated bag day, or it might increase. We don't know, what we do know though, is that OPR and team retention seem to be relatively strongly correlated in the present. If gblake wants to deny the usefulness of OPR as a metric for team success, that is fine, but it is fallacious to say that OPR is a poor metric for team success in the present just because it might not be correlated with team retention in the future.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

And yet you have contributed nothing.

Sigh

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

...
I am fully 100% aware that correlation is not causation. However, gblake is going a step further by essentially denying that any correlation even exists in the present. This correlation could very well be diminished if we eliminated bag day, or it might increase. We don't know, what we do know though, is that OPR and team retention seem to be relatively strongly correlated in the present. If gblake wants to deny the usefulness of OPR as a metric for team success, that is fine, but it is fallacious to say that OPR is a poor metric for team success in the present just because it might not be correlated with team retention in the future.

I'm pretty sure I never said that the correlation doesn't exist. Quite the opposite.

Both of the symptoms you mention, and more, could easily be symptoms of something more fundamental that would be essentially unaffected by the SBD. My belief is that this is the case. They are symptoms of a more fundamental problem that is insensitive to SBD machinations. In recent previous discussions I have explained that.

I am saying that FIRST or anyone basing their actions on correlation rather than causation would be a mistake, because it would be gambling (give or take some windage that comes from what their gut tells them) rather than managing.

I am implying that FIRST or anyone else involved should (hopefully, quick like a bunny) dig deeper to find root causes, and also learn (as a result of experiments) which of several approaches to managing the subject create the best cocktail of improvement techniques.

It might turn out that eliminating tools-down in all its forms is the a part of the solution. I am skeptical of that, but during experiments, the chips will fall where they may.

Blake

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by gblake

No, I am saying that FIRST or anyone basing their actions on correlation rather than causation would be a mistake, because it would be gambling (give ot take some windage that comes from what their gut tells them) rather than managing.

I am implying that FIRST or anyone else involved should (hopefully, quick like a bunny) dig deeper to find root causes, and also learn (as a result of experiments) which of several approaches to managing the subject create the best cocktail of improvement techniques.

It might turn out that eliminating tools-down in all its forms is the a part of the solution. I am skeptical of that, but during experiments, the chips will fall where they may.

We have yet to hear your opinion along with a bit justification after 10 posts. Feel free to link what you have said in the past because after some searching I found nothing.

I infer you want to keep bag and tag, but I do not understand the reasons why. You have contradicted yourself a few times along the way making it really unclear. You seem to want anyone with a different opinion to shut up and let FIRST HQ make the decision, but clearly based on them creating a survey they want to hear what we think about this topic.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

We have yet to hear your opinion along with a bit justification after 10 posts. Feel free to link what you have said in the past because after some searching I found nothing.

I infer you want to keep bag and tag, but I do not understand the reasons why. You have contradicted yourself a few times along the way making it really unclear. You seem to want anyone with a different opinion to shut up and let FIRST HQ make the decision, but clearly based on them creating a survey they want to hear what we think about this topic.

Sigh

[bkahl]

Originally Posted by gblake

Sigh

Blake,

Just out of curiosity...

What is your issue with the argument against SBD?

You do not list FRC involvement in your profile, rather FTC and VRC. Both of those competitions do not have a stop build day.

What gives you the right to tell FRC mentors, students, volunteers, etc. that the movement they are trying to spur is stupid and not worth their time, when that exact movement is promoting something that FTC and VRC, the programs that you support, both already have.

You have no substantial evidence to argue, and are telling people presenting serious sets of data they are wasting their time.

Is Jim Zondag's Paper just a blast from the past? (The correct answer is NO). You are telling us that our discussion is meaningless and should just be links to past posts. FIRST has changed. It has evolved. There is new data to be presented and we should be discussing this development of SBD every year, as the Data in Jim's paper presents. SBD is very recently become more of an issue than in years past (at least that is how I interpreted JZ's data).

Stop wasting my time, the other poster's in this thread's time, and (even though I don't care about it) your time.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by gblake

Sigh

11 posts and we are all anxious to hear your opinions. Too bad all we have been getting are sighs.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by gblake

I am implying that FIRST or anyone else involved should (hopefully, quick like a bunny) dig deeper to find root causes, and also learn (as a result of experiments) which of several approaches to managing the subject create the best cocktail of improvement techniques.

It might turn out that eliminating tools-down in all its forms is the a part of the solution. I am skeptical of that, but during experiments, the chips will fall where they may.

Blake

Blake-

Following the vein of scientific method (objective experimentation, identifying measurable variables, etc). I'm really curious if you could share one (or more) of your own hypotheses that would counter the one Jim (among others) has outlined? Discussing THAT would actually lead to meaningful discussion, I think.

Standing back and simply saying 'we need more experiments' makes it difficult for people who view Jim (among others) findings as pretty conclusive. We need to see the other options, other potential causes, etc.

-Brando

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

11 posts and we are all anxious to hear your opinions. Too bad all we have been getting are sighs.

Instead of updating the "sigh" post, I'll create this one

There was a recent thread on team sustainability: here

Someone using the ID Sperkowsky participated in that thread: here

Someone using the ID gblake participated in that thread:
here, here, here, here, and here, and in other places.

I found those by searching for "build season".

Brandon,

I agree. One suggestion I made recently is in the links above. It is the one I would put at the top of my list of things to try. There are others that are different or are variations on that theme.

Blake