[FRC Blog] "Standard District Points System for 2015"

[Christopher149]

Blog Date: Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - 15:01

As I’ve said a few times, the Standard District Points System will be made an official part of the FRC Manual this season, and in future seasons. It will come as a new Section 7 of the FRC Administrative Manual that deals broadly with advancement, not just for Districts, but for Regionals as well, covering such topics as Wild Cards. That new section is under final review. I apologize for the delay. In the meantime, folks are understandably anxious about what the points system will look like for this season, with our move away from Win/Loss/Tie in Recycle Rush, so I want to provide you with those details even though the manual section itself isn’t ready yet.

The updated system was developed by a team of two volunteer representatives each from all five Districts, along with some FRC staff members. We started work a few weeks before the game was released, so all volunteers from the Districts were asked to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). They never saw the full details of the game in advance of Kickoff. They knew that ranking would be based on average points, not Win/Loss/Tie, and that it would not be a low-scoring game, but knew very little else about the game itself. We asked them to sign NDAs because we considered even the fact that we would be basing rank on average points to be very confidential information.

The folks below were members of the team:

• Indiana District representatives – Chris Fultz, Liz Smith
• Mid Atlantic Robotics District representatives – Ben Ng, Ed Petrillo
• Michigan District representatives – Dan Kimura, Jim Zondag
• New England District representatives – Bruce Linton, Jamee Luce
• Pacific Northwest District representatives - Leo Conniff, Kevin Ross
• FRC Staff representatives – Lori Burkhamer, Danny Diaz, Miriam Somero, me

I want to thank everyone for their work on the team. This, in my mind, was a ‘dream team’ – everyone came to the table with an interest in doing the best job possible for the community as a whole, and our discussions were open, honest, friendly, and productive. Best of all, I think we ended up in a really good place! We recognized that the current points system works, and we were determined to make minimal changes in adapting it for a game not dependent on Win/Loss/Tie.

You can find the details of the 2015 FRC Standard District Points Ranking system here. Note that Michigan will be following a slightly modified points system at their Championship, because of the large number of teams they will be inviting. This modified system has not yet been finalized. FRC has agreed to Michigan’s verbal description of the system, but we are awaiting a written summary so we can review carefully before giving final approval. I would expect we’ll be able to release the system that will be in use at the Michigan District Championship within a few weeks.

The rather complicated-looking formula showing in the summary document was developed initially by FRC’s own Danny Diaz, FRC Systems Engineer, and modified with the support of the more mathematically-minded volunteers in the group. The intent was to come close to emulating the points distribution at events we had seen with the traditional Win/Loss/Tie system formulaically. Danny has put together a summary of how this formula works, along with representative points values for different size events, here.

Hope everyone is having a great build season so far!