Seeding Calculations

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Posted by Joe Johnson.   [PICTURE: SAME | NEW | HELP]


Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 9/2/99 7:33 PM MST


In Reply to: How about this? posted by P.J. Baker on 9/2/99 11:13 AM MST:



Very good. I like it a lot.

It has some of the problems of not being a fixed number that folks can get ahold until the end, but it could be made to work.

FIRST would have to 'publish' the current running average of the winning and losing scores along with corresponding standard devaitions so that teams could at least estimate what sort of scores teams they would have to shoot for in the later rounds in order to make the finals (this may actually give a lot of folks a pretty good understanding of a lot of statistical ideas

One thing I like about your formula is that there is no shame in losing to a great offensive team 512 to 500 only the extra 200 points are at stake. Also, there is no shame in losing to a great defensive team by the score of 1 to 2 again, only the 200 points. In each case the score ends up substantially 300 for the winner and 100 for the loser.

What about the case where two teams battle to (the median winning score) to (the median losing score)? Again, this would yield a score of 300 for the winner and 100 for the loser.

What about a blowout? Highest score to zero. 400 points for the winner zero points for the loser.

I am a little bit afraid of this case. I think that too many strong teams would be compelled to embarass a week team if they got the chance.

So...

How about this in stead:

Winners QP Formula: 100 + 100*MAX(% of winning scores below yours, % of losing scores above your opponents)

Losers QP Formula: 100*MAX(%of losing scores below yours , %of winning scores above your opponents)

This formula rewards a team for high scoring OR for great defense but not both at the same time. It also reduces the winning bonus so that it is on par with outstanding defense or outstanding offense

In this way a team either makes the choice to go for a high score or great defense but their is no advantage to doing BOTH.

This puts the incentives where they belong: Winning matters a lot. Outstanding performance matters a lot -- whether offense or defense.

Thoughts?

Joe J.

P.S. And one more thing that is good about your idea (and is preserved in my slight modification) is that teams have an incentive to keep playing even if they are going to loose. Even if you can't win, you still gain QP by having your opponent score less or by scoring more yourself.