pic: Spread of US FIRST Teams

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by RoboMom

Damien, great project! In the world of public health (where I come from) there are maps like this used in epidemiology.
Have you thought about sending to frcteams@usfirst.org?

It has already been done, and FIRST has been taking a look at it since yesterday.

Damian - they will be in touch.

-dave

[1629coalition]

I dont think that 1629 is on there!!! We are in Western Maryland, and I see no little dot!!!!!! We started in 2005!!!! Hook us up on the map!!!!

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by David Brinza

Yes, Team 356 from Little Rock.
Folks on the Bomb Squad called them "the other team from Arkansas." I believe 356 competed from ~2001 to 2004.

More trivia: the two Arkansas teams were in the same alliance in the St. Louis Regional in "Stack Attack". I think they made it to the finals.

Originally Posted by Budda648

Name was Enigma... they were purple and neon green and always had neon green plexiglass on there robot somewhere. Pretty interesting. They did compete only until 2004.

I recall seeing 356 Enigma at the St. Louis Regional in 2002, 2003, and 2004. I also recall that they were allied with 16 and 525 for eliminations in 2003 but that alliance did not reach the finals. See the Wayback Machine archive for 2003 St. Louis Regional awards and results.

In 2004, 356 was the highest seeded team not to be picked for eliminations at St. Louis -- they were pretty disappointed about that and told me so as they were packing to leave. They declined to be the first stand-by robot.

[115inventorsam]

Originally Posted by Cory

If I remember correctly, the three oldest CA teams are actually 100, 8, and 192.

I know the first two are the oldest. 100 started in 95. 8 started in 96(I think? maybe 97) and I believe 192 started in 1997.

Woops, you got me on that one, I wasn't thinking straight. Now I need to re-examine that map to check who's where, 8, 100, 192, 114, and 115 are pretty close together on the map, so it's hard to find them on the map, plus they are all pretty dark red.

Here's some data which is probably inaccurate, from the FIRST team pages
8: 1996
100: 1998
114: 1997
115: 1998(This one I can confirm)
192: 1997
Again as I said, not necessarily correct, maybe someone can give the proper year for these teams?

And finally, maybe someone really skilled could make an interactive map making it go year by year, that would be pretty cool.

[Michael Corsetto]

114 was started in 1997 for sure BTW.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Originally Posted by 115inventorsam

Woops, you got me on that one, I wasn't thinking straight. Now I need to re-examine that map to check who's where, 8, 100, 192, 114, and 115 are pretty close together on the map, so it's hard to find them on the map, plus they are all pretty dark red.

Here's some data which is probably inaccurate, from the FIRST team pages
8: 1996
100: 1998
114: 1997
115: 1998(This one I can confirm)
192: 1997
Again as I said, not necessarily correct, maybe someone can give the proper year for these teams?

And finally, maybe someone really skilled could make an interactive map making it go year by year, that would be pretty cool.

You have to keep in mind that permanent numbers were not always the case...

Perhaps we received team # "100" in 1998 but the team was actually founded in 1995. We have a championship banner to prove that

[EricH]

I think I recognized 330, 294, 207, and either 4 or 22 (not sure which) in the LA area cluster (They're the darkest 4. 330 and 294 are almost on top of each other.) Yes, there are that many teams in the L.A. area. I think in the past two years, we've only had one non-California team show up per year, and only two or three non-SoCal teams. This is at a 50-team event.

[Guy Davidson]

Originally Posted by 115inventorsam

Woops, you got me on that one, I wasn't thinking straight. Now I need to re-examine that map to check who's where, 8, 100, 192, 114, and 115 are pretty close together on the map, so it's hard to find them on the map, plus they are all pretty dark red.

Here's some data which is probably inaccurate, from the FIRST team pages
8: 1996
100: 1998
114: 1997
115: 1998(This one I can confirm)
192: 1997
Again as I said, not necessarily correct, maybe someone can give the proper year for these teams?

And finally, maybe someone really skilled could make an interactive map making it go year by year, that would be pretty cool.

As far as 8 goes, he's correct. We started in 1996. That makes us the second oldest team in the Bay Area, after Woodside.

[Vashts6583]

007 is there, and to repeat the repitions repetitively, great job times 5.

I wonder if, over the course of the next two or three years, the face of FIRST will be changing a little, and bringing in more teams from other areas of the country.

Nexr project: WORLD MAP!!



good luck

[gblake]

Originally Posted by KathieK

This gives a nice visual of the growth in FIRST in the U.S. - does that include all four programs, or just FRC? The background layer of percentage of engineers in the workforce was surprising to see. Some states which I thought would include more engineers were lighter, while others whom I didn't expect to have as many engineers were darker in color. Nice job!

If "percentage of population" means percentage of STATE population and not percentage of US population, then at first glance, some states can be expected to be a surprising shade of blue.

9 engineers in a state with a population of 10 would turn that state dark blue. A state with 900 engineers in a population of a million would be lighter....

Damien will have to tell us if he used percentages of state populations or percentages of US population.

Blake
PS: Plus, the occasional large installation in the middle of nowhere (like Los Alamos) will surprise you the first time you realize just how big they are.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by IndySam

One of those dots around Cincinnati is team 554 from Ft. Thomas, KY. It is surprising that there are no teams in the Louisville or Knoxville areas.

I am a U Ky BSEE alumnus and a Triangle Fraternity (a "greek" fraternity of engineers architects and scientists) alumnus.

Kentucky is in my sights. The problem is that I live in Northern VA....

At UK there is an FRC judge in the College of Engineering who has establishing connections between the college, its coop program and businesses as part of his duties.

I took classes from the Engineer/Entrepreneur who is now the president of the University, and I am 100% confident he would encourage FIRST to put the pedal-to-the-metal in Kentucky.

UK and U of L, respectively are within about 90 and 120 minutes of Ft Thomas.

The Triangle Chapters at both schools are good strong groups of young studious leaders involved in their campuses and their communities.

What "we" need to do is to get a link between those pools of talent and labor, and 2-3 schools in each city. In three to five years FIRST, UK/UL and Triangle will all be stronger and have grown.... And then we can move on to starting teams in my hometown of Lone Oak / Paducah; where UK has a large satellite campus of their engineering college (and then Ashland, Bowling Green, Frankfort, Georgetown (Toyota Camry), Morehead, Murray,...)

Who knows of any other resources in Ky?

Who is close enough to Lexington/Louisville to take advantage of the current circumstances and turn those resources into a perfect storm?

Blake

[Joe Ross]

Here are some previous maps that were done by other people over the years. Looking at all of them gives a good idea of the growth of FIRST.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/18808
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/19353
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/19459
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/19344

[Rob2713g]

That's really cool! What did you use to make it?

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Nica F.

It looks like a couple trips need to be made to Nebraska and Kentucky!

Originally Posted by IndySam

One of those dots around Cincinnati is team 554 from Ft. Thomas, KY.

I can't quite see the dot on Papillon, Nebraska (just south of Omaha) home of FRC 2044. They were at the Kansas City Regional, seeded ninth, and reached the semifinals in an alliance that included the Bomb Squad.

So all 50 states have at least one FRC team.

[Damian Manda]

This thread was closed for a while yesterday, so sorry it took a while to respond. Thanks everyone for the great response. Many great ideas have been thrown out and I would like to do more myself when I have time. As for a larger area, it would have looked too sparse on a world map (lets change that!) and one grading criteria was good density of data. I also didn't include Alaska and Hawaii for space reasons, but have the data and it would be easy to add.

To answer a few people's questions, from the original shapefile that I created, the points were manipulated to spread them out in high density areas so that most points are visible (although I probably missed a few that are still stacked). As noted some teams are in the wrong place (there is a dot for each team). When the cities were georeferenced, some ended up in the completely wrong places, so I actually repeated the process 4 times and took the average of the ones that matched, but even
then, I manually corrected a few and am sure there are some that did not map correctly. It would be fairly straightforward to show team numbers, since that was integrated as a field into the shapefile for the GIS, but the high density areas would be difficult to show in a way that all could be visible and readable, but I will see what I can do. I looked quickly for lego league data, but couldn't find any easily, but I think maps of the other competitions would be cool as well. Also, the percentages are of total employment in each state to answer that question.

Anyone is welcome to use this for materials promoting or explaining FIRST or any other purpose you see fit. That is one of the reasons I wanted to share this in the first place, I was sure some people could find uses for it. I would appreciate if you left on my name, but other than that feel free distribute the map.