08 Colorado Controversy

[PrincessJae]

I haven't found a thread about the "controversy" that happened yesterday at Colorado. I do not have much information about it but couldn't seem to find it here so I wanted to make a thread for anyone that happened to know more.

Those that were'nt there, the jist of it is that in the quarters, semis and final matches, red alliance always won. You can see at the match standings on the blue alliance.

http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv...hp?eventid=168

Coincidence? Or was it that the system was not counting some points scored by the blue alliance (blue trackballs crossing over finish lines). I know that once we brought this up to the judges they changed to score on one match (match 16?). They changed some points scored by blue in hybrid mode and some other points that i can't remember. I came across a website that was webcasting this regional yesterday

frc.qnetalpha.com

But it seems to be down right now. If you have any videos of matches so we can see if certain points were not being scored could we please discuss how to get them up- i know nothing can be changed, the regional is over, but still, i think we would all like to know.

[IndySam]

The red alliance is always the higher seed, so I wouldn't find that totally remarkable.

Would be interesting to look into though.

[Lil' Lavery]

The red alliance's success stems from a much more likely source, the fact that during the elimination rounds, the higher seeded alliance is playing on the red side.
During the 1 vs 8 quarterfinal matches, 1 is on red, 8 is on blue.
During the 2 vs 7 quarterfinal, 2 is red, 7 is blue.
During the 1/8 vs 4/5 semi-final, the 1/8 winner is on red, the 4/5 winner is on blue.
Etc.

The higher seeded alliances apparently were just the better alliances during the elimination rounds in Colorado.

[Vexkingof716]

Maybe the red alliance was just better the whole time. At the CT regional we won every match in the finals, and we were on the red alliance the whole time.

[waialua359]

The opposite happened in Chesapeake.
Other than our first match where we had a tie as a red alliance, ALL of the other alliances had blue (lower seeded alliance) wins. 8 ends up winning it all.
One red alliance made it to the finals, where the blue lost the rubber match due to penalties.
I've never seen a 7 vs. 8. I wonder if its ever happened.

[PrincessJae]

i do understand that the red was the higher seed, but some teams had videos of their blue points not being counted. This isn't something im convinced about-i just want more information from anyone that knows it at colorado. Obviously some points were not counted from match 16, and then they they announced the correction after about a 10 minute delay of the games.

[dtengineering]

If the outcome of the matches were truly random, and red and blue each had a 50% chance of winning, then the chance of seeing 14 straight matches won by the red alliance would be .5^14 (0.5 to the 14th power) or about one in ten thousand. Not likely.

However if you assume that the higher seeded alliance has an increased chance of winning, then those odds are drastically increased. For instance if the higher seeded alliance had an 80% chance of winning then the chances or .8^14, or about 4.4%. In other words, you could expect it to happen about twice each year, given that there are 41 regionals.

And I just drew the 80% number out of the air as an example, but it does show how quickly a weird co-incidence can be explained as an expected random occurence.

Assuming that the match scheduling algorithm assigns teams to matches and alliance colours at random then examining the qualifying matches would be a far better test of the hypothesis that red had an inherent advantage.

Looking at the qualifying match data fairly quickly, it looks like Red won 29 times, Blue won 32 times and there were two ties. That should quench any controversy about the field favouring red.

Jason

[LightWaves1636]

It's just pure coincidence. From match to match, I hate to say it but, it was just pure luck that the better alliance ended up on the red side. Besides Winnovation had the ability to hurdle successfully and quickly and when Bionic Tigers was able to get their bot running, they became one mean alliance. Radio problems I could understand but the scoring system wasn't broken because it would have become obvious to the ref who was working the little button box. The only thing I wish have gone better are penalty calls on hurdle interference and impeding, I think G22 gets call a lot more than other penalties because not only is it easy to do, it's one of the easiest to make a decision on. Also, can anybody tell me why 2083 - Team Blitz was disqualified for match 34? Nobody is really telling me anything about it...

[Rick TYler]

The automated lap counting is not used in the official scoring. Everything used in the official point count comes from those little boxes held by several of your referees. The only exceptions are bonuses at the end of the match and penalties, which are scored by the head referee. There is no way the field system can make one alliance or the other win, unless it simply didn't connect to the scoring boxes or the software stopped keeping track of the totals. At the scorekeeper weekly conference calls, with the exception of one regional, there has been NO discussion of the system not counting scores correctly. At one regional they didn't think the scoring system was correct so they kept score manually (no, I don't know the details).

My experience so far this season is that when teams think there has been mis-scoring, the teams have generally been mistaken more often than they are right, and, at least at Seattle, have had a mature discussion with the head ref who explained why they were wrong. Since the referee question box was near the scorekeeper's table, I heard several of these discussions. Most of the time the team didn't realize why the points for herding the ball or an apparent hurdle didn't count, and were happy with the answer.

Waiting until the event is over and then complaining on a public forum instead of having the drivers handle any questions on the spot is not the way things are supposed to be handled. Did the drivers protest on the spot?

[hillale]

Originally Posted by LightWaves1636

It's just pure coincidence. From match to match, I hate to say it but, it was just pure luck that the better alliance ended up on the red side. Besides Winnovation had the ability to hurdle successfully and quickly and when Bionic Tigers was able to get their bot running, they became one mean alliance. Radio problems I could understand but the scoring system wasn't broken because it would have become obvious to the ref who was working the little button box. The only thing I wish have gone better are penalty calls on hurdle interference and impeding, I think G22 gets call a lot more than other penalties because not only is it easy to do, it's one of the easiest to make a decision on. Also, can anybody tell me why 2083 - Team Blitz was disqualified for match 34? Nobody is really telling me anything about it...

This is not to complain or say that these things only affected our team, I just happened to keep an eye on our bot (much like I'm sure the rest of you do when your bot is on the field). The reffing at the Colorado was questionable at best. We pulled off a couple of diagonal hurdles in the practice matches, just to see if we could do it (with a running start). At first, the refs said it didn't count because we weren't in our home zone and were quite vehement about that. Upon arrival Friday morning, one of the refs politely informed our team that they had done their homework and realized that it was in fact legal (for which i give them credit). However, we were called multiple times for G22 that occurred because we were pushed back across the line by an opposing defensive robot. The refs were confronted about this on Saturday and said that it had been consistently called that way since Thursday and it would remain that way. On another occasion, our robot was directly impeded for 12 seconds by two opposing robots. No flags were waved, no penalties assessed. Finally, even being a shooter bot, our launcher lifts the ball up to break the plane at the top of the lane divider (guaranteeing us protection while hurdling). We were hassled several times while holding a ball in our home zone and moving towards the overpass to hurdle. There was never a penalty assessed. As far as the scoring controversy is concerned, one of our mentors felt that there might be a scoring issue, so 4 of our team members watched a couple matches, scoring them by what we saw, and the penalties that the refs called. The scoring seemed to us to be legitimate for the matches that we witnessed. Other than reffing, the Colorado regional was one of the best we've ever attended. The MC Todd was phenomenal, the judges were amazing, and lets not forget the other teams. They treated us like family and reminded us what FIRST is all about.

[Un Luchador]

Throughout the competition, as hillale has already mentioned, the referees were unaware of several rules and seemed to be a bit overwhelemed with the task of making decisive actions. Apperantly there was at least one video shown to concerned teams and the head referee that proved there was a faulty count in regards to the counting of two blue alliances' matches. In this video, trackballs crossing the finish line were not given points.
We would like the team, I believe it was 1764, to post the video. It's not exactly a challange against the established final scores, rather an incident that should be brought to light.
As for the probability of the red alliance winning every final match, which is what was brought up during a challange to a referee as being under .00000000000005% chance, there are many other factors that contribute towards the chances of this happening, including the fact that the red alliance begins with the highest seeded team. It's not analogous to flipping a coin, as someone had brought up at the competition.

[Alex.Norton]

After having attended the Colorado regional since it started I will say that the reffing every years brings certain question of competence to my mind. In 2005 they kept changing several of the rules regarding loading a tetra from the human loading zone and then after making a decision didn't really ref it the same way each time. We thought about arguing several times but eventually decided we where having too much fun to care. This isn't an isolated incident for the Colorado regional but I have never found it to adversely affect my enjoyment of the regional even when it very directly affected my team and would like to thank the refs for as good a job as they do since it is far better than I might expect.

Frankly this year I saw many instances where the G22 rule wasn't called however I never saw it such that it would have effected the outcome of the match. Other than the Colorado regional I have only attended one other event (that being the 2004 championships) so I can't say how this compares to other regionals but I can't imagine it being much different.

[PrincessJae]

Being a rookie team, and attending San Diego and Colorado i felt that my first experience between the regionals were very different. Besides San Diego being more fast paced and louder, the referees were very open to any challenges of their calls. They changed the score on one of my teams matches because they thought that knocking off an opponents ball from the overpass with your own ball was illegal. In which after they announced about 3 times to everyone.

In colorado, in the opening ceromonies when introducing the refs they announced that all of their calls were final and there would be no rematches played. In san diego one match was replayed 3 times. I also noticed that in san diego the challenge box was clearly labeled. In colorado it was a box with a question mark in it. we had some questions the first day about timeouts and brought it to the judge and he seemed to have no idea about them.

[LightWaves1636]

Originally Posted by Un Luchador

Throughout the competition, as hillale has already mentioned, the referees were unaware of several rules and seemed to be a bit overwhelemed with the task of making decisive actions. Apperantly there was at least one video shown to concerned teams and the head referee that proved there was a faulty count in regards to the counting of two blue alliances' matches. In this video, trackballs crossing the finish line were not given points.
We would like the team, I believe it was 1764, to post the video. It's not exactly a challange against the established final scores, rather an incident that should be brought to light.
As for the probability of the red alliance winning every final match, which is what was brought up during a challange to a referee as being under .00000000000005% chance, there are many other factors that contribute towards the chances of this happening, including the fact that the red alliance begins with the highest seeded team. It's not analogous to flipping a coin, as someone had brought up at the competition.

Did 1764 post videos? Because I know for sure the Colorado School of Mines Robotics Club and a mentor from FRC1583-Rambotics was recording the video feed, rendered the video, webcasted with a 2 hour delay, and upload to frc.qnetalpha.com, as far as I know, it's updated to Match 45...

Originally Posted by PrincessJae

Being a rookie team, and attending San Diego and Colorado i felt that my first experience between the regionals were very different. Besides San Diego being more fast paced and louder, the referees were very open to any challenges of their calls. They changed the score on one of my teams matches because they thought that knocking off an opponents ball from the overpass with your own ball was illegal. In which after they announced about 3 times to everyone.

In colorado, in the opening ceromonies when introducing the refs they announced that all of their calls were final and there would be no rematches played. In san diego one match was replayed 3 times. I also noticed that in san diego the challenge box was clearly labeled. In colorado it was a box with a question mark in it. we had some questions the first day about timeouts and brought it to the judge and he seemed to have no idea about them.

Well, it's not the judges job to really know the rules, the judges just judge each team based on the rubric they are given...

[libertyrobotics]

we will try to get videos up soon. We noticed that in the middle of some of our matches the score would drop with no explaination. It was 24 then dropped to 18, can anyone offer an explaination for that?