What Is the best FIRST state.

[Amanda Morrison]

All the information was taken from the US map on the FIRST website. I'd like to see how many other states rank up. NY, MI, FL, etc.

[Lisa Perez]

Oh, of course *smacks self in head*... Thanks. Michigan will be up sometime early tonight

[Jessica Boucher]

I dont know...out of the 16 people who voiced an opinion about the "best FIRST state", 81% voted for the state/province listed in their personal location.

There's no real answer here. Run all the stats you want, but the point is that there is no best FIRST state. They can not be compared against eachother since there is no equal playing field for them to be compared upon: land mass, industry makeup, taxes/gov't funding, even quality of life factor in. So, until we can agree on a metric to define the point of this post, there's just no way to answer this.

[Quatitos]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

If we look at it by national championships, Michigan wins, followed by Indiana and California.

Michigan - 8
California - 5
Indiana - 5
Connecticut - 2
Massachusetts - 2
New Jersey - 2
Ohio - 2
Delaware - 1
Illinois - 1
New York - 1
Texas - 1

Hmm, if you look at it how I'm looking at it Michigan is in the lead with only a 7 or 7.5 depending on how you look at it with Ohio in fourth with a 2.5-3. See there is this weird thing where the schools from our team are from Ohio, but our sponsor is in Michigan so we are registered as a Michigan team but we sorta swing both ways. Go Ohio? I think I'm in the minority

[xzvrw2]

I think by far Michigan is the best. I am not saying that because of what state I am in. If you look at the past four championships who was in the winning alliance? 2002-66 2003-469,65 2004-494 2005-67,503. And as my dad just reminded me...there are only nine teams in the hall of fame and Michigan has one of them. Also where was the team from that created this website? hmmmm Michigan. Now don't get me wrong, Indiana has the legendary Team Hammond and the legendary team 45, and Cali has 330, 254, and many many other great teams, but all in all, Michigan is the state to beat.


Stevie

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by xzvrw2

I think by far Michigan is the best. I am not saying that because of what state I am in. If you look at the past four championships who was in the winning alliance? 2002-66 2003-469,65 2004-494 2005-67,503. And as my dad just reminded me...there are only nine teams in the hall of fame and Michigan has one of them. Also where was the team from that created this website? hmmmm Michigan. Now don't get me wrong, Indiana has the legendary Team Hammond and the legendary team 45, and Cali has 330, 254, and many many other great teams, but all in all, Michigan is the state to beat.


Stevie

Actually there are 13 teams in the Hall of Fame (3 of them are defunct) and there are now 2 Michigan teams (Chiefdelphi and the H.O.T. Team).

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

Even if you say that the 105 teams in existence now are the only teams in California's history, that's approx. 3.2 awards per team.

Indiana, with 21 teams this year (25 total in history), with 149 awards (not counting those won by defunct teams) is approx. 7 awards per team.

Shall we also take landmass into account?

I didn't make a single statement about the data, I only presented the data (For the record, I think IN and MI are both ahead of CA)

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

All the information was taken from the US map on the FIRST website. I'd like to see how many other states rank up. NY, MI, FL, etc.

Also, for a state with a ton of teams like CA, it was a heck of a lot easier for me to use www.archive.org to look at the FIRST site each year and find awards, rather than going through each team.

CA teams were mostly confined to west coast regionals though, so I didn't have to check every single event page.

[Lisa Perez]

Here are the stats for Michigan, subject to editing (seeing that I just copied and pasted each team's data into Word, and did a Find function for each of the awards). Must double-check for discrepancies.

7 National Championships
8 Championship Division Finalists
12 Regional Chairman's Awards
62 Regional Winners
33 Regional Finalists
26 Rookie All-Star Awards
23 Xerox Creativity Awards
0 KPC&B Entrepreneurship Awards
22 Leadership in Control/Innovation in Control Award
42 Judges' Awards
16 GM Industrial Design Awards
19 Delphi's Driving Tomorrow's Technology Awards
29 Motorola Quality Awards
14 Engineering Inspiration Awards
5 Woodie Flowers Award Winners
6 UFH Honorees

I still stand by my statement that I think there are no "best" states, though.

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally Posted by Cory

(For the record, I think IN and MI are both ahead of CA)

Lisa, hopefully you had the foresight to use archive.org, as I did not (thanks Cory). And at least someone else realizes that Michigan stomps us all.

I find the point of this thread rather amusing. While I can't speak for anyone else that has posted, I can personally say that I had very little ties or pride in my home state, other than the fact that I happened to be born here. FIRST, while encouraging the camraderie between teams, has also seemed to give us that pride in our states and geographic regions. Yet another unnoticed, yet not small, accomplishment. Before I ran the stats for Indiana (which was for IndianaFIRST's new website, not for this thread), I had no idea that the state was that successful. It's certainly given me a resurgence of pride for my state and their success in educational robotics and technology.

While I suppose in some eyes this can be viewed as pompous boasting, especially with no metric defined, I see this simply as pride in accomplishments. Students in the FIRST program should see these statistics not as simple bragging rights, but instead homage to the efforts of the teams that, for many years, strove to further the message of FIRST's core.

[sarahbeara22]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

While Indy has the ledgendary team 71 Team Hammond and the best known off season competition IRI for overall quality Michigan has produced numerous champions and Chairman's award winners. It's the heart of FIRST.

yea team 67 did win both but there is some curse once you win the chairmans you cant win the chapionships. they won the championships then the chairmans. but if the california team hadnt picked the teams from michigan they wouldnt be there. i think michigan is awesome but so is cali.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by ali_rockon22

Well if you look at Chairman Award winners by state it goes something like this:

Michigan-2 (67,47)
California-2 (22,254)
Ohio-2 (120,144)
Pennsylvania-1 (103)
Connecticut-1 (175)
Arkansas-1 (16)
Massachusetts-1 (23)
New Hampshire-1 (151)
New York-1 (191)

Please correct me if any of these are wrong. It still doesn't say the best state, I'm just giving some info.

We don't get counted twice?

[xzvrw2]

yeah yeah yeah rub it in lmao. but michigan is still better.

[Conor Ryan]

What about Nebraska, They only undefeated state.

Yeah they have no teams.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

I had very little ties or pride in my home state, other than the fact that I happened to be born here.

I'd like my state to be the best in everything, but I'm realistic enough to know when we aren't

I'd be perfectly happy no matter how many awards my state has won, as long as there are teams to inspire students (and adults!).

[JamesBrown]

Well with only Three teams, I like RI the Best, honestly who else can say they have met just about every member (maybe with the exception of 5) of every team in the state?? RI definitly has the closest knit group of first teams.