Qualitiative Scouting

[Skyehawk]

Originally Posted by chandrew

This is the exact issue we have had with qualitative data. In he past when we have put qualitative sections in our scouting sheet, we have gotten a wide range of very good data mixed with students messing around and hugley varied opinions.
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Basically while in our experience qualitative data can be valuable, words are far more subjective than numbers.

I think the varied data is not a result of qualitative or quantitative. It's how invested people are in the match. When you have too many catagories for a scout to gather info on you are potentially subject to any number of distractions, especially due to the data entry. I believe this is best avoided by collecting only what is necassary durring the match. There are some stats that can be evaluated prior to or at the end of a match, mainly the standard qualitative stats (driver skill, time managment, etc), this keeps the amount of eyes-on-field time to a maximum.
Utilizing the concepts I just stated we will only be keeping track of 9 different things over the course of teleop, and several of them are simple true-false (i.e. climbed). Simplified UI has been on of my main focii this season, this leads to that all valuable eyes-on-field time. It is my hope that only having a few catagories that are subject to opinion that we can glean the benifits of a qualitative catagory with the consistancy of a quantitative one. This coupled with the ability to filter out data from a spicific scouter if necassary should put us in a strong position to make an accurate pick list.

Simplified UIs coupled with the ability to filter out any known discrepencies allows a highly qualitative system to opererate efficently and reliably.