Crazy Idea, looking for comments

[archiver]

Posted by P.J. Baker, Engineer on team #177, Bobcat Robotics, from South Windsor High School and International Fuel Cells.

Posted on 5/5/99 2:11 PM MST


In Reply to: Re: Or we could try the easy way... posted by Chris on 5/5/99 12:50 PM MST:



: I think the luck factor would just shift to a different area. The luck factor would be in the strength of the group of 26 that you're in. A decent team could get lucky and be put in with a group of lesser robots and make it to the dance while the same team might get put in a group with a bunch of good teams and finish poorly. It's a lot like (oh no, another sports reference) Major League Baseball a few years ago when 4 teams in the American League East had better records than the champion of the American League West. The A.L West champion made it to the playoffs and only one of the 4 better teams in the A.L. East made it. That system isn't necessarily fair either.

: -Chris

This is a good point. I have a feeling that my way does reduce the luck involved, but since I haven’t done the math, let’s assume I’m wrong. All we need now is a way to reduce the “luck” involved in the assignment of teams to the small groups. Guess what, we have one! The regional tournaments. Take the seeding results form all of the regionals and divide them into quartiles (the top 25% from each regional are lumped together, the second 25% from each, etc.). Then fill each of the small groups for the national tournament like this:

Randomly assign the top quartile teams, then the second quartile, then the third quartile, and then the fourth quartile.

For teams that go to more than 1 regional, their average quartile rank would be used, rounding up for .5’s and higher, down for below .5 (1.33 goes to 1st quartile, 1.5 goes to 2nd quartile)

Certainly there is some luck involved in where you seed in regionals, but it is less so. There is also an argument that there will be some regionals with much stronger fields than others, but I think this goes further towards reducing the luck factor. We can not eliminate it, nor would I really want to. But there are ways to minimize it to the point where most people feel there is a direct correlation between effort, ability, and results.

P.J.