Toughest Regional Metrics...

[Joe Johnson]

Those of you who attended the Great Lakes Regional and the Western Michigan Regional, know that Dave Verbrugge -- MC without peer -- pulled together a metric that he used to demonstrate (at least to the folks listening to him live) that the GLR was the toughest regional and the WMR was the toughest "pound for pound."

His metric was essentially this: Take all the number of teams that were finalist or winners of the divisions in Atlanta and see which regional had the most number of teams in that group of 24.

If you do that this year, this is what you get:

1. West Michigan Regional, Allendale, MI 6
2. Sacramento Regional, Davis, CA 5
3. Great Lakes Regional, Ypsilanti, MI 5
4. Detroit Regional, Detroit, MI 5
5. Finger Lakes Regional, Rochester, NY 3
6. Boilermaker Regional, West Lafayette, IN 3
7. Florida Regional, Orlando, FL 2
8. Pacific Northwest Regional, Portland, OR 2
9. Buckeye Regional, Cleveland, OH 2
10. Midwest Regional, Chicago, IL 2
11. Silicon Valley Regional , San Jose, CA 2
12. Palmetto Regional, Columbia, SC 2
13. BAE SYSTEMS Granite State Regional, Manchester, NH 1
14. NASA / VCU Regional, Richmond, VA 1
15. Arizona Regional, Phoenix, AZ 1
16. Pittsburgh Regional, Pittsburgh, PA 1
17. St. Louis Regional, St. Charles, MO 1
18. Chesapeake Regional, Annapolis, MD 1
19. New Jersey Regional, Trenton, NJ 1
20. Colorado Regional, Denver, CO 1
21. Las Vegas Regional, Las Vegas, NV 1
22. Southern California Regional, Los Angeles, CA 1
23. Peachtree Regional, Duluth, GA 0
24. UTC New England Regional, Hartford, CT 0
25. SBPLI Long Island Regional, Hempstead, NY 0
26. New York City Regional, New York, NY 0
27. Philadelphia Regional, Philadelphia, PA 0
28. Waterloo Regional, Waterloo, ON Canada 0
29. Greater Toronto Regional, Mississauga, ON
30. Canada 0 Lone Star Regional, Houston, TX 0

Looks good for WMR. With SAC, GLR and Detroit right behind.

But what if you take the WINNERS of the divisions:

1. Sacramento Regional, Davis, CA 5
2. Detroit Regional, Detroit, MI 4
3. West Michigan Regional, Allendale, MI 3
4. Great Lakes Regional, Ypsilanti, MI 3
5. Silicon Valley Regional , San Jose, CA 2
6. Finger Lakes Regional, Rochester, NY 1
7. Florida Regional, Orlando, FL 1
8. Buckeye Regional, Cleveland, OH 1
9. Midwest Regional, Chicago, IL 1
10. BAE SYSTEMS Granite State Regional, Manchester, NH 1
11. Arizona Regional, Phoenix, AZ 1
12. Chesapeake Regional, Annapolis, MD 1
13. New Jersey Regional, Trenton, NJ 1
14. Colorado Regional, Denver, CO 1
15. Las Vegas Regional, Las Vegas, NV 1
16. Southern California Regional, Los Angeles, CA 1

Sacramento is looking pretty tough.

But you can go with the FINALIST AND CHAMPIONS only

1. Sacramento Regional, Davis, CA 3
2. Great Lakes Regional, Ypsilanti, MI 2
3. Detroit Regional, Detroit, MI 1
4. West Michigan Regional, Allendale, MI 1
5. Silicon Valley Regional , San Jose, CA 1
6. Buckeye Regional, Cleveland, OH 1
7. Arizona Regional, Phoenix, AZ 1
8. New Jersey Regional, Trenton, NJ 1
9. Colorado Regional, Denver, CO 1
10. Las Vegas Regional, Las Vegas, NV 1
11. Southern California Regional, Los Angeles, CA 1

Again, Sacramento is looking pretty tough.

But WAIT, THERE'S MORE! What about the CHAMPIONS ONLY:

1. Great Lakes Regional, Ypsilanti, MI 2
2. Sacramento Regional, Davis, CA 1
3. Detroit Regional, Detroit, MI 1
4. West Michigan Regional, Allendale, MI 1
5. Buckeye Regional, Cleveland, OH 1
6. Southern California Regional, Los Angeles, CA 1

Bottom line: Define your metric and you can get just about any result you want.

So... ...what is your metric? Define a metric and argue that this or that regional is the biggest and baddest going on.

Joe J.

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Those of you who attended the Great Lakes Regional and the Western Michigan Regional, know that Dave Verbrugge -- MC without peer -- pulled together a metric that he used to demonstrate (at least to the folks listening to him live) that the GLR was the toughest regional and the WMR was the toughest "pound for pound."

His metric was essentially this: Take all the number of teams that were finalist or winners of the divisions in Atlanta and see which regional had the most number of teams in that group of 24.

If you do that this year, this is what you get:


Looks good for WMR. With SAC, GLR and Detroit right behind.

But what if you take the WINNERS of the divisions:


Sacramento is looking pretty tough.

But you can go with the FINALIST AND CHAMPIONS only



Again, Sacramento is looking pretty tough.

But WAIT, THERE'S MORE! What about the CHAMPIONS ONLY:



Bottom line: Define your metric and you can get just about any result you want.

So... ...what is your metric? Define a metric and argue that this or that regional is the biggest and baddest going on.

Joe J.

Wow!

I could have sworn that Robbe Extreme (56) Championship Finalists were winners at Philadelphia. They sure fooled me accepting that trophy there!

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by Bill Moore

Wow!

I could have sworn that Robbe Extreme (56) Championship Finalists were winners at Philadelphia. They sure fooled me accepting that trophy there!

My mistake.

Others feel free to check my data.

But the challenge is still out there: Propose a Metric for the toughest regional, make it as simple as "this is the one MyTeam goes to" to one that requires multivariable calculus.

Share your thoughts.

Joe J.

[EricH]

How about adding in a factor for number of teams at a regional? (In which case, any double-field regional may have an edge over the single-field regionals.)

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by EricH

How about adding in a factor for number of teams at a regional? (In which case, any double-field regional may have an edge over the single-field regionals.)

Are you arguing that an 80 team regional that has one Divisional Champion &/or Finalists harder than a 40 team regional that has one Divisional Champ &/or Finalist?

Again, this is a create your own metric thread, but if anything I would argue the othe way: A regional seems harder to me if they have a higher percentage of Divisional Champs & /or Finalist.

So I would argue for the Metric that Dave Verbrugge used at Western Michigan: Pound for Pound = Use percentage of teams that meet the standard at a regional.

I am not sure how big Sacramento, but Detroit was pretty small. I think that Detroit might have a case for the strongest regional on a pound for pound basis.

Joe J.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Are you arguing that an 80 team regional that has one Divisional Champion &/or Finalists harder than a 40 team regional that has one Divisional Champ &/or Finalist?

Again, this is a create your own metric thread, but if anything I would argue the othe way: A regional seems harder to me if they have a higher percentage of Divisional Champs & /or Finalist.

I am not sure how big Sacramento, but Detroit was pretty small. I think that Detroit might have a case for the strongest regional on a pound for pound basis.

Joe J.

That was not my intent, but it seems that number of teams should be a factor, though maybe a small one.

You're right, a regional is probably harder if it has a larger percentage of divisional champion/finalist teams. However, one other factor is: do the top dozen or so teams from the regional go to championships? LA only had three of its top teams at Championships: 980, 22, 330. The other 3 regional winner/finalist teams (69, 634, 968) and all of the semifinalists were not there.

Someone said that you could get whatever result you wanted by manipulating the data just right. They are correct.

P. S. Sacramento had about 36 teams, at least 5 of which made it to Einstein.

[RyanMcE]

It seems to me that the best way to do this would be to look at teams that attended multiple regionals and the championship, and see how each they did in each regional. Specifically, I would like to make a compuer program that uses an algorithm to calculate relative regional stengths using this sort of system. Unfortunately, so much of the information on FIRST's website is missing or completely wrong, I don't think this is possible this year.

But I will offer this: If you are not allied with team 254, the Sacramento regional is the toughest regional to win in the world.

[Winged Globe]

Originally Posted by RyanMcE

But I will offer this: If you are not allied with team 254, the Sacramento regional is the toughest regional to win in the world.

Or perhaps Silicon Valley? That's where their undefeated streak is. It'll be an interesting and exciting set of matches if/when that streak ends.

[JohnnyB]

Looks like Michigan is representin' *raises roof*

Pretty cool

[Bill Moore]

I don't think you can use metrics from Championships to determine the toughest regionals, because the game and robots change throughout the season.

One could argue that the regionals held the first weekend are the toughest. This isn't baseball or football which is constant from year to year, this game is "newly invented" each year. The teams competing during the first weekend have no previous games to watch for strategy or how opponents may try to disrupt your robot. They have to adjust on the spot to unforeseen challenges, while the rest of us get to watch a broadcast/webcast and learn from their efforts.

Likewise, teams get to view what is important in the playoffs. How many times did you see aggressive defense in the regionals. A number of teams saw penalties because of this aggressiveness. On Einstein, how many robots played aggressive defense for their alliance?

The game starts, we learn, the game changes, we learn some more, the game changes again, we learn even more . . .

[E. Wood]

If a regional has 35 good robots out of 40 and only one national finalist does that make it easier than a regional that happens to have a good robot that happened to be the National Champion? Now this is just an example but regionals that have more team are usually harder than smaller ones just because there are more good teams. Also has the weeks go by some regionals get harder because of the experience that some teams have gained at other regionals. I went to the Pittsburgh regional as a spectator and the Chesapeake regional as a participate and i can tell you that from what i saw it was a lot harder to get into the final 8 alliances at the Chesapeake regional. I am not saying that the winners of the Pittsburgh regional weren't as good, they obvious did well at nationals because Pittsburgh was ranked higher than the Chesapeake regional. But you just cant use the winners of nationals as a way to rank the regionals because not every good team gets to go to nationals.

[Cory]

Joe: it seems to me that you've fairly successfuly debunked the notion that the west coast is "soft" and cannot compete with the midwest/east coast (at least this year, and yes, I know, 56 did come cross country and helped our numbers out)

[Rob27]

Originally Posted by Bill Moore

One could argue that the regionals held the first weekend are the toughest. This isn't baseball or football which is constant from year to year, this game is "newly invented" each year. The teams competing during the first weekend have no previous games to watch for strategy or how opponents may try to disrupt your robot. They have to adjust on the spot to unforeseen challenges, while the rest of us get to watch a broadcast/webcast and learn from their efforts.

You can argue the opposite, too. By the last weekend of regionals, teams have learned the game, and you have to face the teams that have seen the finals and know how to play them.

Take West Michigan (My pick for the toughest regional) for example.

Out of 41 Teams -
There were 2 previous two-time champions: 67, 245
2 previous champions: 66 (who became a double champ), 494
5 previous finalists: 33, 93, 123, 288, 322
the first regional for only 1 team: 518
and the third regional for 7 teams: 33, 47, 67, 141, 245, 302, 494

To me, it's harder to play a team who knows what they're doing than one who is trying to figure out the game.

[Paul H]

Originally Posted by Rob27

the first regional for only 1 team: 518

It was 1504's first regional too.

[Mark Garver]

Originally Posted by Bill Moore

I don't think you can use metrics from Championships to determine the toughest regionals, because the game and robots change throughout the season.

The same is true because each of the divisions where "stacked" differently which wouldn't allow some teams to surface as others may have in different divisions. The whole use of the bracket system really doesn't inform people to more than who won and who lost. Trying to compare even quarter finalist from the same division, in order to rank is not possible in less some type of "losers" bracket is created where all alliances play each other; however this even assumes that the robots will be of the same quality at the beginning of each match.

Lots could be done to improve the method in which teams advance...