Rookie scouting coordinator requesting input

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by BMartin 234

In my 5 years of doing scouting, the two biggest items I have found useful are 1) how many points/game pieces each robot is worth and 2) pictures. An objective measure of driver ability is also useful (last year, how easily you got scored on was a limited measure of this). Last year, summing the average number of game pieces each team could score accurately predicted about 80% of the matches at the regionals we attended. This year, points may be used similarly (we'll see after week 1).

I have to agree with this. I ran a scouting crew for 5 years (, that scares even me!) and every year we got better.

As currently written, there's no way you'll be able to concisely summarize the information you have available. IMHO, what you need is numbers, and you don't need very many of them.

In my experience, the more information you ask for from scouts, the less you can trust it. In 2007 we asked for probably a dozen numbers per robot per match... and we ended up using only 2. The scouts didn't even report most of the other numbers, there was too much going on in the match. So in 2008 and 2009 we asked for way fewer numbers. In 2008 we asked for: # lines in auton, # of lines crossed in teleop, balls hurdled, balls placed. In 2009 we asked for: balls scored (approx), balls scored on robot (approx), and Empty Cells delivered. Ask for any more and the scouts won't get good numbers, and they'll get really mad at you really fast.

That said, we also had a pair of experienced kids who kept subjective notes. It's important that you trust the judgement of the note keepers though, a parent you've just pulled in off the street probably won't be able to give you opinions you trust.

In pit scouting you've got a lot more room to play, but whatever you do, it needs to end up in an easy to digest format. And as others have said, pictures are really important. You've probably got that one kid who can keep all the robots at your event straight, but not everyone can do that.

PM me if you're interested, and I can see if I can hook you up with copies of our old stuff to look over.