How do you think FIRST should select divisions?

[Bill Moore]

Cory's right, you need to go to a full random selection process. If one division gets "overloaded" with what is percieved as the top talent, that's just the luck of the draw.

The problem with trying to do it mathematically is at some point you will need to make "judgement" calls on the teams. Look at all the threads questioning the calls made at regionals and you can see how "judgement" is valued.

You have a simple formula now, but what if your regional were "overloaded" with talented teams (whatever "overloaded" means). A 20th place finisher in a tough regional may be better than the first place finisher elsewhere. You'd have to calculate in when the regional was held; first week teams don't have the advantage of watching the gameplay on NASA-TV to select the better strategies. You'd have to account for robot's improving through the regionals -- as most who attend multiple regionals do. In the end, you'd have to develop a large scouting system to handle this, and FIRST just doesn't have those resources. They are better used fixing the scoring system anyway,

Just go to a full random process and forget about whether someone thinks it's "balanced" or not, because it doesn't matter how careful you try to balance the divisions, you will never get everyone to agree that they were really balanced.