Registration 2017

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

Wow that is incredible.

Michigan officially needs its own Blue Alliance GameDay page each week....

That can be arranged

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Karibou

Apologies if I missed it elsewhere in the thread, but is that a typical amount of missing veterans compared to previous years? Can you do a breakdown of team age for the missing vets?

Based on thes FRC Growth and FIRST FRC Participation threads, 8 or 9% is a typical attrition count. As Sean notes, Israel is not in yet, and there are likely a few other veterans who will get in just under the deadline.

I don't have my numbers from calculating this handy, but IIRC, attrition rates are a bit higher than average (12-15%) for the first two years, drop to about 9 or 10% for year three-to-four, and decay from there down to about 5-7% per year for teams with a decade of history.

Edit: Here's the link to the data I used to calculate attrition rates, though not my results.

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

Michigan officially needs its own Blue Alliance GameDay page each week....

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

That can be arranged

For the past two seasons we've had this thing called RoboZone. Excellent outreach tool, bringing FIRST to the small screen where proud grandmothers and communities can see it. Jim Zondag and Dan Kimura have done a great job providing analysis and color, while the professional broadcasters work their sports production magic. Robotics is a real high school sport in Michigan, as it is in many other regions.

Focussed TBA GameDay coverage would bring depth to the picture that insiders see, and that is also important.

[Mark McLeod]

We have our first rookie team from the Canadian Yukon Territory.
Whitehorse (I've even been there once).

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by Karibou

Can you do a breakdown of team age for the missing vets?

This is how many years ago the team was originally founded, not how many years they have played though. Some of these teams didn't play in all intervening years.
Special note: There is at least one team, 2479, whose rookie year is listed as 2008, however the school first had a team as far back as 1993. So depending on how you want to think about it you might want to list them as a 9 year veteran rather than a 24 year veteran team. I just ran this off the All_FRC_Teams_Ever database.
If you want unadjusted rookie years you can use GeeTwo's spreadsheet that he posted a link to below.

I took out the Israeli teams and the few vets languishing on waitlists that I know about.
That left 237 missing non-Israeli vets.

Years
since
Founding
1 ----- 46 are Missing (what would be second year teams if they come back this season)
2 ----- 43 Missing
3 ----- 29 Missing
4 ----- 25 Missing
5 ----- 21 Missing
6 ----- 18 Missing
7 ----- 12 Missing
8 ----- 13 Missing
9 ------ 6 Missing
10 ----- 2 Missing
11 ----- 3 Missing
12 ----- 1 Missing
13 ----- 6 Missing
14 ----- 2 Missing
15 ----- 2 Missing
16 ----- 2 Missing
17 ----- 1 Missing
19 ----- 2 Missing
20 ----- 1 Missing
24 ----- 2 Missing


P.S.
There's an attached pie chart comparing the relative percentages of each age group.
Remember though that younger age groups generally come from a larger pool of teams, so this chart does not reflect equal sampling.
I'll add a post later with relative percentages of the remaining rookie year populations (Thanksgiving grocery shopping takes precedence).

[JohnFogarty]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

We have our first rookie team from the Canadian Yukon Territory.
Whitehorse (I've even been there once).

My mom was born there, she's ecstatic.

[Jardanium]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

There is at least one team, 2479, whose rookie year is listed as 2008, however the school first had a team as far back as 1993.

2479 is an interesting one, I'm not quite sure they had a team in 1993 though. As far to my knowledge, the only team in North Minneapolis back in 1993 was one based out of North High School. We had a mentor on our team whose son was on the team back then. (the stories she told and yearbook she showed were so interesting!) This mentor had told us that the team lost the support of their primary sponsor, Honeywell, and died out. That team was never numbered either, so there really is no traceable history of them competing. We helped support the growth of a new robotics program at North High School, who now competes under 5637.

I'm not sure if the original North High School team has connections to 2479 or not, but from what I've heard, it isn't likely. We also supported the "rebirth" of 2479 these last two years based out of the Minneapolis College Prep Charter School, however the school shutdown last year, along with the rebirth of the Phoenix. It's a shame that a team has to die out when the school closes, however I have hope that maybe we'll see 2479 end up somewhere again, just like they did when the team started with us back in 2014.

We have seen a bad retention rate when it came to teams sustaining in urban areas, with lack of funding, schools closing, or teachers leaving being common results. It's been a problem we've been working to solve in Minneapolis, but obviously some (like 2479) die off without being able to do anything about it. It's really hard to keep a team sustaining when a school closes and their entire student base separates to two high schools with FRC Teams.

From what I've seen lack of funding, school closings, and mentors leaving are the most common factors for teams dying out, but I wonder what else could cause it.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Jardanium

2479 is an interesting one, I'm not quite sure they had a team in 1993 though. As far to my knowledge, the only team in North Minneapolis back in 1993 was one based out of North High School. We had a mentor on our team whose son was on the team back then. (the stories she told and yearbook she showed were so interesting!) This mentor had told us that the team lost the support of their primary sponsor, Honeywell, and died out. That team was never numbered either, so there really is no traceable history of them competing. We helped support the growth of a new robotics program at North High School, who now competes under 5637.

I'm not sure if the original North High School team has connections to 2479 or not, but from what I've heard, it isn't likely. We also supported the "rebirth" of 2479 these last two years based out of the Minneapolis College Prep Charter School, however the school shutdown last year, along with the rebirth of the Phoenix. It's a shame that a team has to die out when the school closes, however I have hope that maybe we'll see 2479 end up somewhere again, just like they did when the team started with us back in 2014.

We have seen a bad retention rate when it came to teams sustaining in urban areas, with lack of funding, schools closing, or teachers leaving being common results. It's been a problem we've been working to solve in Minneapolis, but obviously some (like 2479) die off without being able to do anything about it. It's really hard to keep a team sustaining when a school closes and their entire student base separates to two high schools with FRC Teams.

From what I've seen lack of funding, school closings, and mentors leaving are the most common factors for teams dying out, but I wonder what else could cause it.

If you spend some time digging through the Tecknokat's History Project: http://www.technokats.org/history-project/ you may be able to trace some of the early goings of the team.

These documents helped a lot in piecing the story of 125 together. We learned a ton about our team and were able to reestablish some connections to help get the full history back. Our team goes all the way back to the beginning in 1992, but we missed a year in 1995. The team that existed back then split into a couple different teams in 1997 which is why our rookie year is 1998.

Best
Brando

[Daria Wing]

Whaaaaaatttt?????? WHOA! So many robo-nerds <3

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Jardanium

From what I've seen lack of funding, school closings, and mentors leaving are the most common factors for teams dying out, but I wonder what else could cause it.

Apparently, stop build day was the bane of many teams.

[Mark McLeod]

Here's an expansion on the missing vets by rookie year.

# Missing – yrs ago – Rookie – # Surviving – % lost
1 ------- ( 12 years ) 2005 ------ 86 ---------- 1.2%
2 ------- ( 10 years ) 2007 ----- 114 ---------- 1.8%
1 ------- ( 17 years ) 2000 ------ 48 ---------- 2.1%
2 ------- ( 16 years ) 2001 ------ 75 ---------- 2.7%
2 ------- ( 15 years ) 2002 ------ 73 ---------- 2.7%
3 ------- ( 11 years ) 2006 ----- 102 ---------- 2.9%
1 ------- ( 20 years ) 1997 ------ 30 ---------- 3.3%
6 ------- ( 9 years -) 2008 ----- 173 ---------- 3.5%
2 ------- ( 14 years ) 2003 ------ 54 ---------- 3.7%
21 ------ ( 5 years -) 2012 ----- 290 ---------- 7.2%
12 ------ ( 7 years -) 2010 ----- 165 ---------- 7.3%
6 ------- ( 13 years ) 2004 ------ 82 ---------- 7.3%
13 ------ ( 8 years -) 2009 ----- 175 ---------- 7.4%
18 ------ ( 6 years -) 2011 ----- 234 ---------- 7.7%
2 ------- ( 19 years ) 1998 ------ 23 ---------- 8.7%
29 ------ ( 3 years -) 2014 ----- 305 ---------- 9.5%
25 ------ ( 4 years -) 2013 ----- 254 ---------- 9.8%
46 ------ ( 1 year --) 2016 ----- 410 --------- 11.2%
43 ------ ( 2 years -) 2015 ----- 329 --------- 13.1%
2 ------- ( 24 years ) 1993 ------- 3 --------- 66.7%

[GeeTwo]

Sorting Mark's number by year yields:

Years Attrition
1 11.2
2 13.1
3 9.5
4 9.8
5 7.2
6 7.7
7 7.3
8 7.4
9 3.5
10 1.8
11 2.9
12 1.2
13 7.3
14 3.7
15 2.7
16 2.7
17 2.1
19 8.7
20 3.3
24 66.7

After smoothing through the values beyond 8 years, this looks a lot like the usual attrition rate - biggest after two years, second biggest after first year, then improving steadily from third year to a long-term team.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by Jardanium

2479 is an interesting one, I'm not quite sure they had a team in 1993 though...

Here is the reason, the team 2479 has drifted from school to school over the years.
Honeywell was the main sponsor for the early years, then General Mills for the resurgence beginning in 2008.
So it began again in North high school in 2008 & 2009 before moving to Dunwoody, then Metro Tech, then College Prep.
These are the school names registered with FIRST for each of the years they competed.

Year ----- School
2016 ----- Minneapolis College Prep High School
2015 ----- Minneapolis College Prep High School
2014 ----- Minneapolis College Preparatory School
2013 ----- MetroTech Career Academy
2012 ----- MetroTech Academy High School
2011 ----- Dunwoody Academy High School
2010 ----- Dunwoody Academy High School
2009 ----- North High School
2008 ----- North High School
1997 ----- North Community High School
1996 ----- North Community High School
1995 ----- North Community HS
1994 ----- North Community High School
1993 ----- North Community High School

[Jardanium]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Here is the reason, the team has drifted from school to school over the years.
Honeywell was the main sponsor for the early years, then General Mills for the resurgence beginning in 2008.
So it began again in North high school in 2008 & 2009 before moving to Dunwoody, then Metro Tech, then College Prep.

Wow! You learn something new everyday. Can't wait to tell my mentor tomorrow that the team we mentored was originally the North High team. Thank you for this info!

[Mark McLeod]

A school in Guam has started two teams-6308 & 6309.