April Absurdity 2013

[Grim Tuesday]

I had the privilege of participating in a March Madness bracket this past march and with the recent success of the "Make your champs predictions!" thread, I think the concept carries over excellently to FRC. As such, I decided to create April Absurdity, the FRC version of March Madness.

For those unfamiliar, March Madness is based around the NCAA college basketball tournament and participants in a pool attempt to correctly predict how far each team will make it and who will win the tournament. The same holds true for the FRC implementation. Download the PDF, fill it out and turn it in by the deadline (below) and you are entered into the pool. The winner gets bragging rights. Here are the important things to know from the rules in the pdf, if you want to see them before you download:

• You may enter either a division or the full bracket. However, to fill out a bracket for Einstein, you must fill one out for all divisions
• The deadline is Thursday at 1 PM, before qualification matches start
• To submit a bracket, send the filled out .pdf to aprilabsurdity@gmail.com or drop by 639's pit in Archimedes and hand it in
• There is a 15% bonus for submitting it before Looking Forward posts so get going!
• I will be entering one myself so I promise not to look at any brackets in the aprilabsurdity gmail until after the deadline at which point they will be posted in this thread
• Make sure to put your name (and Chief Delphi name) down on the first page so you can be credited

Points are awarded in the following fashion, per team that makes it to the following point:
+1 pt for correct quarternalist
+3 pts for correct seminalist
+6 pts for correct divisional nalist
+12 pts for correct division winner
+18 pts for correct Einstein nalist
+24 pts for correct World Champion

For some logic on why the points are what they are, they are not quite exponential to encourage making bolder choices early on. However, they are significant enough to highly reward someone who picks correctly in the high tier.

Bonuses are granted for the following:
+1 pt for correctly predicting the number of matches a matchup will go to
+4 pts for correctly predicting where an alliance captain will seed
+10 pts for correctly predicting a full alliance (one time bonus)
+15 pts for correctly predicting a backup bot (+5 pts each for the following: backup bot called, backup bot replacing a certain robot in the alliance, and the identity of the backup bot; each may be obtained separately)
+15% bonus if the bracket is submitted before the annual Looking Forward post(s)

The alliance system slightly complicates things from a standard bracket but to make the system simple, if team 123 makes it to the semifinals, you will get the points for it, regardless of whether they are on the alliance you predicted they would be on. In other words, points are awarded based on the amount of correct semifinalists (or however far in the tournament you are) you have. The only exception to this is the 4 point bonus granted to predicting an alliance captain's position (ie I predict 456 will be captain of the 7th alliance; they are) correctly, and that is a one time bonus.

I will probably have a couple paper copies available for the taking in 639's pit (Archimedes) Thursday morning for people who want to fill one out on the spur of the moment but I would highly recommend doing it ahead of time, if only to get the 15% bonus.

Click here to download the .pdf file that you fill out - Right click>Download. I suggest Foxit PDF reader, the fill in boxes show up in bright orange. This will not work if you fill it out in Chrome and then right click>save as. You must download the file first.

Finally, if you are planning to submit a bracket, please post about it in this thread. Since the submission is not through Chief Delphi, I see the potential for this thread to fall to the bottom quickly. So post about if you are going to submit and post when you do.

[themccannman]

This is a great idea, definitely doing it.

[EricDrost]

I would be a lot more interested if the submission deadline was after the match schedules come out. At this point, predictions are entirely luck based. Whoever can best predict winners with the match schedule available is a far more talented person than the person who gets lucky and guesses which top robot had the ideal match schedule.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by EricDrost

I would be a lot more interested if the submission deadline was after the match schedules come out. At this point, predictions are entirely luck based. Whoever can best predict winners with the match schedule available is a far more talented person than the person who gets lucky and guesses which top robot had the ideal match schedule.

Agreed with this sentiment. Those who do brackets well every year are the ones that do their research. Also, my MATLAB skills are getting rusty.

[Jay O'Donnell]

When I made the make your predictions thread I only did Division winners because I thought people wouldn't want to take the time to do all of this. I clearly underestimate FIRSTers

I'll try to do this later today. Thanks for putting it together!

[Tetraman]

Sounds awesome.

May I suggest an alteration to the scoring system as follows:

+1 Point for each correctly picked team regardless of which seed they are slotted.
+2 Points for each time your correctly picked team advances.
+5 Points for each time your correctly picked team advances/wins on Einstein.

+3 Points for each correctly picked team in the correctly picked seed.
+6 Points for each correctly picked team in the correctly picked seed advances.
+10 Points for each time your correctly picked team advances/wins on Einstein.

+10 Points for selecting a correct alliance. (+6 points if that alliance is also in the correct seed.)
+10 Points for correctly calling for a backup robot in that match. (You are allowed only 5 "call for backups" in the entire bracket.)

Set the deadline to thursday @ midnight. This allows us to fill out brackets now and really have fun with it. It also makes it a heck of a lot easier on you to calculate the scores.

[Jon Stratis]

WHen I first saw the thread title, I was sure it was going to be about the 8.5" of snow we got here in the twin cities two days ago... but this is a pleasant surprise! I'll definitely be filling out a bracket!

[MARS_James]

The Curie Curse continues! they are the only division without Code Red's logo

[Joon Park]

Originally Posted by EricDrost

I would be a lot more interested if the submission deadline was after the match schedules come out. At this point, predictions are entirely luck based. Whoever can best predict winners with the match schedule available is a far more talented person than the person who gets lucky and guesses which top robot had the ideal match schedule.

When Simon (GrimTuesday) and I were discussing the deadline, we decided that the hard deadline must be before qualifications begin, because once seeding starts you now have access to that information.

Because this is the first year, we'll see how things go, and members of 639 will hopefully continue the April Absurdity next year with improvements from lessons learned.

[Grim Tuesday]

Update to the document: Fixed two copy errors and updated the prize to make it more clear what you've won.


As for time due and scoring, I think those are linked quite well. The scoring system I chose is nearly exponential which means that if a team you've chosen to go deep does, it greatly helps your bracket. Points are barely awarded for picking quarterfinalists correctly compared to picking Einstein bots right. What that means is that honestly, no matter the final seeding, the person with the more correct choices later on will do better. However, it is not completely exponential to make it still possible to win overall on a solid bracket with the wrong winner (s).

Also, you have access to the match schedule Thursday morning so if you really do your homework, you can modify your bracket in the five hours you have.

I'd be willing to talk more about making the deadline something like Thursday midnight but my goal in this was for this to be more of a pre-championships game, to keep us busy while we wait, not one that everyone does Thursday night in their hotel rooms.

[nicholsjj]

That took longer than I thought even without using major stats. This was fun but it became extremely difficult due to the amount of great teams this year. Newton felt the most top heavy and Curie felt the most even, but that just might be the way that I'm looking at it. Mine is almost guaranteed to be wrong.
A few neat Einstein points on my bracket.
3 HOF teams.
3 Canadian teams.
2 Michigan teams.
2 California teams.
2 Missouri teams.(A little bit biased )
4 returning Einstein teams.
Winning alliance: 118-1114-3284 Keeping a blue banner in the show-me-state

[EricDrost]

Originally Posted by Joon Park

Because this is the first year, we'll see how things go, and members of 639 will hopefully continue the April Absurdity next year with improvements from lessons learned.

Sounds awesome anyways, good luck guys.

[bardd]

I'm so in! Awesome idea.

[Dragonking]

It won't let me save the form.
Because of this I can't send a completed form. What should I do?

[bardd]

Originally Posted by Dragonking

It won't let me save the form.
Because of this I can't send a completed form. What should I do?

Are you using Foxit reader or Adobe reader?

If you're using Foxit, save with a different file name.
If you're using Adobe, may god have mercy on your soul. Download Foxit, copy everything, textfield by textfield.

Learned that the hard way.