Frank Answers Fridays: Expanded Championship Qualification

[dag0620]

Originally Posted by Alex2614

Have you ever been on a team that has won Rookie All-Star? I have the (granted, we won the regional too, but by chance. Beside the point). We worked very very hard to make it to champs, and the biggest thing that kept us going was being on the same field as the powerhouses. Even though we got our butts kicked, the most inspiring thing about the whole year was being on the same field with the "big kids." And from there, the next year, we were inspired to build a machine that could beat those teams.

Putting all Rookie All-Star winners on their own field is kind of like saying "aw, that's cute, but you're not really worthy of playing with us real FRC teams." There was already enough of the "aw, you're a rookie team, you must need tons of help, and let's overcrowd you with advice and help that you don't need" our rookie year, but being put on our own field would have just been a slap in the face to us. It would have felt like FIRST didn't really want us there, but they had to. There's a reason that Rookie All-Star, Chairman's, and EI winners are invited to champs in the first place, and there's a reason they were never segregated.

Just my $0.02 coming from when I was a founding member of a rookie team.

I totally agree with this! Putting Rookie All-Star winners off by themselves is basically saying "Well you're invited to be at the Championship event, but you really didn't actually make the Championship". Keeping RAS, RCA, REI, etc. evenly mixed in with field competitive teams is important.

So many people out there want championship to be about the best robots on the field. I understand where they are coming from, but at the end of the day that will not further the ultimate goals of FIRST, which is to create culture shift. Having a championship event where we have the best teams on every front, will help impact the general public, and having Rookie teams at the event with the "big boys" will allow them to be inspired to one day reach those same heights.

[Lil' Lavery]

Why does FIRST have to ensure proportional representation from all areas?

[Nate Laverdure]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Why does FIRST have to ensure proportional representation from all areas?

Of course it doesn't. But it's a way of saying that, to a first-order approximation, all teams have a roughly equal opportunity to advance to CMP. This is part of what makes a compelling competition.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Nate Laverdure

Of course it doesn't. But it's a way of saying that, to a first-order approximation, all teams have a roughly equal opportunity to advance to CMP. This is part of what makes a compelling competition.

Almost no where in FIRST is an equal distribution of CMP slots to number of teams. Florida for instance, there are 12 total possible slots for CMP and yet Florida hold roughly 4% of FIRST; this would be 17-18 slots of CMP. Florida actually sent something like 10-12 teams to CMP this year too.

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Why does FIRST have to ensure proportional representation from all areas?

It really doesn't but with a potential increase of 200 teams I would like it to. If FIRST told Florida that we had to use the District point system to determine who were the highest ranked teams in our state not attending (according to my math to be represented beyond our Regional guarantee spots, we would get 2 more slots.), 744 and 1251 would have been able to attend, personally speaking I feel they were more than championship caliber bots with 744 giving us a tough finals game in South Florida and our twin 1251 was just as tough as we were and arguably the better catcher.

But personally I would rather there be some new determining factor that is fair to all teams other than who can click a mouse the fastest.

Originally Posted by dodar

Almost no where in FIRST is an equal distribution of CMP slots to number of teams. Florida for instance, there are 12 total possible slots for CMP and yet Florida hold roughly 4% of FIRST; this would be 17-18 slots of CMP. Florida actually sent something like 10-12 teams to CMP this year too.

We are actually more like 2.5% of all teams so one could argue previously we were over represented

[Justin Montois]

I'm not sure why a FIRST-wide points system based on the standard district model points system wouldn't work....

Top 600 teams in the world go to champs.

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

I'm not sure why a FIRST-wide points system based on the standard district model points system wouldn't work....

Top 600 teams in the world go to champs.

Because of Chairman's, Engineering Inspiration, and Rookie All Star, plus it would mean waiting until the last possible week for all 600 teams to make their plans to go to Champs.

EDIT: Though if that idea would have been applied last year Florida would have been represented by 180, 179, 744*, 1592, 1251*, 108, 79, and 233*, meaning 1902, 3932, 4013, 5145 and 5196 wouldn't have made it (All who won the awards above except 3932 who was the last pick of the South Florida Winning Alliance)

*-did not qualify

[Justin Montois]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

Because of Chairman's, Engineering Inspiration, and Rookie All Star, plus it would mean waiting until the last possible week for all 600 teams to make their plans to go to Champs.

I think that most teams would be able to make travel plans after their regional when it becomes obvious if they will qualify or not. For example, there would be a theoretical maximum points a team can achieve at their event. Say they go undefeated, win the event and win chairman's. That level of points should put them in the Top 100 and therefore for all intents and purposes qualify them for worlds as a fall from 100 to 601 most likely isn't plausible. Now let's say you have an average event, win half your matches, get knocked out in quarters and win the imagery award. If that puts you in the 1000ish range then you probably aren't going to qualify. If anything I think it would allow more teams to make travel plans sooner because it's easier to track your chances of qualifying. This system would also make wildcards very easy to hand out. 403 can't go, 601 gets in and so on.

Granted this system places a premium on performance and I know a lot of people, myself included, like the thought of rookies going to champs based of the RAS, simple way to handle that is to give the RAS (Also Chairman's) a decent amount of points but not quite an auto qualification. Say you need to win x amount of matches as well or something along those lines to also keep the level of competition high.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

Granted this system places a premium on performance and I know a lot of people, myself included, like the thought of rookies going to champs based of the RAS, simple way to handle that is to give the RAS (Also Chairman's) a decent amount of points but not quite an auto qualification. Say you need to win x amount of matches as well or something along those lines to also keep the level of competition high.

I really like this idea, and I think it solves a lot of the problems people have with the district system. It requires a certain base competitive level to qualify, but certainly rewards teams who win the culture changing awards.

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

I'm not sure why a FIRST-wide points system based on the standard district model points system wouldn't work....

Top 600 teams in the world go to champs.

I think once districts completely displace regional events, then that only makes sense -- especially with the promise of inter-district play.

I'm all for having the most competitive Championship experience, but the impact of a Championship on a less-than exemplary team also needs to be noted -- I've had the distinct pleasure of seeing faces light up with inspiration at the level of play at the Championship. However, some of those teams wouldn't have gotten there if they hadn't been that third robot to the #1 alliance. So I guess what I'm saying is that the top teams should go, but that also needs to be weighed against the merits of letting weaker teams experience Champs.

[DonRotolo]

Hm. Something is vaguely unsatisfying with the comment about 'a district with 10% of the teams gets 10% of the slots'. That's the case now (more or less), but I'm just not following the logic to expand that to 600 slots, guaranteeing a near-overbooking situation every year. And the absurdity of sending 60 teams from MI.*

I think it's me.

I do understand the logic of equal representation though. Either you run districts, which get a proportional representation (and rewards you for growing FRC), or you run regionals, which gets you (about) 6 slots per regional (and rewards you for being able to fund more regionals).

I don't envy the task force.


*Not that they're not welcome, but as AGPapa pointed out, the MSC becomes pointless for everyone but 4-5 teams.

[Jon Stratis]

FIRST doesn't have to have proportional representation at champs... The problem comes in when some areas are proportional while others aren't. Teams from Michigan don't have to compete for spots with teams from Hawaii, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, etc... But Minnesota teams do. I'm completely willing to back a non-proportional system, so long as it provides equal opportunity for everyone, not two radically different sets of rules that potentially benefit one group but not another. Giving proportional representation to one group but not another simply doesn't present a level playing field.

[Shrub]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

FIRST doesn't have to have proportional representation at champs... The problem comes in when some areas are proportional while others aren't. Teams from Michigan don't have to compete for spots with teams from Hawaii, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, etc... But Minnesota teams do. I'm completely willing to back a non-proportional system, so long as it provides equal opportunity for everyone, not two radically different sets of rules that potentially benefit one group but not another. Giving proportional representation to one group but not another simply doesn't present a level playing field.

According to this awesome whitepaper I found, Minnesota is the most under-represented state for FRC teams at CMP (a 14 team difference). (link)

There's also a paper on representation of regions at CMP (link) that goes back quite a bit. (It probably doesn't have much to do with the topic at hand but I think its a good read as well).

Although I do find it interesting, I really have no idea what can be done about it, if anything (especially the under-representation some regions face).