Predicting team startup growth

[Katie_UPS]

Most of the numbers I've been reading (and I'll admit that I skipped a few) are on a "one team per highschool basis". My team is composed of two schools. And I know another team composed of four or five. And another team composed of two schools. Moral of the story? FIRST may also expand in how many schools pool together to create a team (which I think would be better), not just on number of teams...

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Would it be feasible to calculate the results on a county-by-county basis?

Only if there is existing data at that level, otherwise gathering it would be too burdensome.

But, in general, I think by county might be better for some regions. But, as Ed mentioned, state is probably fine at this point.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Would it be feasible to calculate the results on a county-by-county basis?

Some larger states may have a large metropolitan area which "carries" the state, while leaving a lot of suburban or rural areas under-served.

With the exception of perhaps New Jersey, population density at a certain level is a fractal problem. Take a look at where people live in the following states:

Washington
New York
California
Georgia
Minnesota
(and I just grabbed these off the top of my memory stack)

All of them have populations of five million or more, but within the state the population is clustered in one (or two) major urban areas with lots of "flyover" towns and cities in the rest of the state. Even within counties, density is not level, with town vs. suburbs or rural areas occurring in many places. At every level down to the neighborhood, density will be unven.

Counties might be a more useful geographical entity than states, but I'm guessing that you will ultimately find that telephone area codes will do a better job of approximating population distribution. (County population densities are wildly disparate -- Texas, for example, has 24 million people and 254 counties, while California has 36 million people and 58 counties.) As the phone companies add area codes to handle mobile devices, they are becoming a better approximation of population distribution than other political boundaries. This list of area codes by state almost looks like a histogram: http://www.allareacodes.com/area_cod...s_by_state.htm . Of course, in some places, like Southern California, a single geographical space now may have multiple area codes, but these things get complex.

You might also want to look into Metropolitan Statistical Areas for analyzing the US. These are standardized areas used in urban analytics and planning. Google on metropolitan statistical areas and have fun wallowing in data!

Anyway, there are so few middle and high schools in North America with robotics STEM programs, that our collective challenge is to pursue either the easiest targets first (schools which indicate an interest) or those for whom volunteers have a special passion (never underestimate the power of someone with a dream). Trying to drive STEM education into the schools/school districts that aren't interested is something to be done when the "interested but aren't sure how" schools are being served. You utes might find this model interesting reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_Innovations. We are still in the Innovators and early Early Adopter phase of robotics in schools, and not yet at the level of mass adoption.

[Chris Fultz]

Originally Posted by RMiller

In this context, the growth in Minnesota over the last few years is all the more amazing as I would guess it is one of the highest teams/M ratios around.

I believe Minnesota had a huge growth primarily due to a government / education system push to get FIRST into schools. That is the big reason for the "double regional" in Minneapolis (actually 2 events the same weekend).

[RMiller]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

I believe Minnesota had a huge growth primarily due to a government / education system push to get FIRST into schools. That is the big reason for the "double regional" in Minneapolis (actually 2 events the same weekend).

Yes and no.
Yes in that the University of Minnesota has turned into a huge supporter of the program, particularly for teams outside of the Twin Cities and other major cities. In addition, there has always (as far as I remember in my years there) been a major push to be one of the top states for education, part of which has been STEM.
A lot more of it has to do with some individuals who have made contacts with the corporations in the area. If you look at the list of teams and their sponsors, you see a number of corporations that are sponsoring multiple teams and a few of those that have 5+ teams (I don't want to accidentally leave out any of these companies, so I will not list any of them). I can only think of a few teams without a corporate sponsor as their major sponsor.
I do not know the entire story (/plug - if you come to the MN regional this year, I am sure you can talk to a few of the folks who have made it happen - /plug), but my understanding is that a few people got some of the corporations and the word got passed along to the other corporations in the area with the persuasion of the original individuals and year over year success.

[horoponhorr]

I should have taken a statistics class...

[ebarker]

as Homer Simpson would say 'doh' !!!

the chart of teams / million versus ranking, looks familiar eh ?

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by ebarker

as Homer Simpson would say 'doh' !!!

As Ed mentioned earlier, this graph is another fine example of the Pareto principle.

A couple of years ago, feeling geeky because it was my birthday and my new age was a perfect square, I proposed a metric based on teams per Electoral College vote. A plot of that metric vs. team rank would show the same trend as Ed's plot above.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Richard

A couple of years ago, feeling geeky because it was my birthday and my new age was a perfect square,

You don't look 81 years old...

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by Richard

As Ed mentioned earlier, this graph is another fine example of the Pareto principle.

A couple of years ago, feeling geeky because it was my birthday and my new age was a perfect square, I proposed a metric based on teams per Electoral College vote. A plot of that metric vs. team rank would show the same trend as Ed's plot above.

In the generalized simplified case you would expect the teams per million students (tpm) curve to be identical to the teams per electoral vote (tpev) curve if electoral votes are distributed correctly. The obvious defect in that statement is the population numbers we choose was the teenage population, not overall population.

The delta between the curves or the lack of correlation should indicate a future trend ... of something.

the chart:



the data here

The blue curve based on teenage population should be more accurate because that is our target audience. So I vote we stay with that.

Another point to be made is that as the number of teams grow, even if it was ten-fold the natural tendency is for the blue curve to get taller, the tail wold get longer and the bend becomes much more pronounced.

The challenge is to keep the curve a 'flat' as possible and minimize the delta on the y-axis.

Translation: target is 500 tpm everywhere

Interesting observation: Here in the north Atlanta suburbs a typical high school can run 2,000 students. If every high school here had a team then we would be at 500 tpm.

District of Columbia already exceeds 500 tpm with only about half their high schools participating, meaning they have a different student density.



.

[DesMoinesFRC#1]

I wanted to let everyone new we are starting a Des Moines FRC team please let me know if you are interested in joining us

[dtengineering]

Proximity to an existing regional event would likely be a factor. If you are within a one day drive of the event then travel and transportation is much less onerous than when you have to fly.

If you are within a half-day drive then you also have access to a support network and can attend kickoffs and workshops.

I like the statistical idea... but somewhere the "cluster" effect would likely have to be accounted for.

Jason

<Edit: just noted Foster's comments below, did a re-read, and realized that yep... this thread had died a long time ago. Guess I missed it the first time around.>

[Foster]

Interesting that this thread got restarted. I had an interesting discussion on why I would pass out First info at a VEX event. It's simple, I don't really care what program people are involved in (even though VEX is the most awesome , but I want them involved. I spent some time with Joe P, talking about how the hangar we were in would be amazing for a FRC event. And I made sure he got introduced to the liaison for DAFB, our Air Force recruiter and the Senators aide for Delaware. If I could double the number of robotics kids each year, year after year, for the next 10 years, our penetration rate in Delaware would just break the 5% mark.

And I'm convinced it's about the events, and I've been convinced by that for a long time. We started with VRC with one event in Newark and one event in central PA and 4 teams in Philly. Now there are 20 VEX events within a 2 hour drive of the center of Philadelphia (including Dover Delaware!) and about 100 teams. It's competition robotics, without competitions why do it?