Red Advantage ?

[Warren Boudreau]

I would recommend removing all elimination round matches from your data.

It is statistically biased such that the higher seeded teams are on the red side of the field. Yes, that is the way the brackets are supposed to work. There may be some exceptions, but there is still a statistical bias.

The qualifying round pairings and color assignments are pretty random, so that is where you are going to determine if there is a real statistical bias towards one color or the other.

So far, the only hard data that I have seen in this thread from the qualifying rounds indicates that blue might have an advantage over red. But the population pool is too small at this time to draw a valid conclusion.

[Moloch]

I was in GLR and HATED! the red side. I dont know why, but we always did better when we were on blue, always. We scored more points, won more. We had red in the semi finals and got creamed. I think that it might have been diffrent if we were on blue, we just always played better over there.


#1254!

[pakrat]

where was the screen at the regional in question?? I know at GLR it was really easy for one alliance to see the screen, and the other had to turn around. Just a random observation.

[Moloch]

The screen is irrelivant. When your driving, and on the field, you sont want to look at the screen. You are looking on the field. I never once looked at the screen, and niether did my coach or other driver. It was behind the reds alliance.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Moloch

The screen is irrelivant. When your driving, and on the field, you sont want to look at the screen. You are looking on the field. I never once looked at the screen, and niether did my coach or other driver. It was behind the reds alliance.

In 2003 it certainly was handy (when showing the right part of the field) for manoeuvring a 14"-tall robot among 18"-tall boxes, behind a 2'-tall ramp, over 40' away. I used it on a couple of occasions to accurately drive the robot in areas which would otherwise have been invisible.

Granted, this year, your robot will be a little easier to see.

[psquared89]

I don't know, during qualifying we had two "flukes" with the red stations, but by finals we played on the red side and didn't have a single problem, heck, we won.

Besides that thought, it think the visibility of different colors is an interesting idea. Think in our world, how many places you see lights that are white, yellow, orange, red, and green, all over the place. Ever time I see a blue light it's very unique, that's why I love flying at night. Look out a window sometime while flying at night, you can see every color down there, except blue and purple (trust me, I've flown alot, and always seem to get a window seat with nothing better to do...), the only place you see blue is at airports. We I built my newest computer, the case power light and HDD Busy light were blue LEDs, I was fascinated with them for at least a week.

All theories aside, however, having coached two regionals to victory from both sides of the field, there's no difference, at least none that our drive team can tell...

[BaldwinNYRookie]

From what I saw of the results at the long Island regional, the blue alliance won most of the time. In fact it was too often to be a coincidence. I'm just worried there was some factor that may or may not have altered the outcome of the competition.

http://www2.usfirst.org/2005comp/Events/LI/matches.html

[Validius]

all the matches that we won in GLR were on read team.

I watched peachtree regional for like 45 minuts and i never saw blue win.....

[rgopaul]

You know, I said the same thing about the red tets to a team member of mine at the MD regionals on Sat... It looked like the operators had an easier time of distinguishing between the edges of the red tets and the goals than between the edges of the blue tets and the goals.

[-matt-]

I'm not sure how your practice fields are set up, but our field is such that, when using the autoloader, it is only possible to simulate the red side. Therefore, it would make sense that our team would do better on red. However, this is only a single case, but the setup of the practice field would have an effect on how well drivers played on different sides of the fields.

[geeknerd99]

Our practice field was set up to be like red's as well. Apparently, this helped us greatly, since we ended playing every round except one on the red side. Ironically, when we were playing on the blue side, we got the VCU high score with 98-0...

[Btower]

Just for more fuel,

2005 Detroit Regional Qualifying Rounds

Blue Side - 40 Wins - 2278 Points (w/o Penalties) 250 Penalty Points
Red Side - 26 Wins - 1819 Points (w/o Penalties) 260 Penalty Points

Blue Alliance Team Rank Average 16th
Red Alliance Team Rank Average 18th
(I know we've got a kinda causal loop here but i just thought I'd check)


Ben Tower

[Kit Gerhart]

Boilermaker Q Matches

Blue side 36 wins
Red side 31 wins

Two ties

[Yan Wang]

New York Times: The Color of Victory Is Red, Scientists Say

Link (free subscription required): http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/sc...nd-red.html?hp

[Greg Ross]

Originally Posted by Yan Wang

New York Times: The Color of Victory Is Red, Scientists Say

Link (free subscription required): http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/sc...nd-red.html?hp

All Things Considered covered this story too: Study: Red Is the Color of Olympic Victory (No subscription required )