[FRC Blog] Two Championship Survey Results and Path Forward

[Christopher149]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

And, this being my first year seeing it -- were FRC and FTC always this physically separated?

In 2014, FTC had its pits about where Archimedes pits were in 2015, and had playing fields on the dome floor. So, this significant separation is new.

[Drakxii]

Originally Posted by maths222

To throw a bit of FTC perspective into this thread: I understand that most FRC participants don't care about seeing FTC and FLL, and to be honest, I probably wouldn't either if I participated in FRC. However, it is the other direction which is much more significant (at least from my perspective). One of the biggest things that made the World Championship so special and different from other tournaments, like super-regionals, was the opportunity to see and interact with FRC teams and robots, and by splitting the programs, the FTC championships immediately feel less big and magical. This doesn't mean I support two championships, but it does mean that if there are to be two, some presence of the whole progression of programs seems valuable.

Very true but I think a model like what Alamo does where the FTC super-regional held at the same time as an FRC event would be a better model then have both the FTC and FRC champs at the same location. This would allow FTC team to interact with FRC teams (and more of them) without the FTC game being totally overshadowed by the FRC game.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by jman4747

And I hinted at it before but as I think about it how is "Keeping attendance costs reasonable" so low? It bothers me.

Because the survey asked respondents to choose their top N items. The decision to split the Championship has only minor effects on cost for most teams.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

Because the survey asked respondents to choose their top N items. The decision to split the Championship has only minor effects on cost for most teams.

Going to Detroit, going to Houston, going to St Louis, it's all about the same distance for us, and a lot of other teams. Had I not known what the venues were, or were they to tell me to disregard the venue choice, I may have answered differently, but as it is cost isn't a big factor when the only difference will be whether we'll be 10 hours away in intense humidity, or 10 hours away in a just-thawed city.

This also brings up an interesting point: Had this survey been given out before the announcements, I guarantee we'd see a different set of responses, and some different priorities (cost reduction would've been higher priority, and one true champion would've been less important).

I hope the committee will come up with a solution for region locking so that I don't have to go on vacation to California and Washington to see some inspirational teams and my skunk buddies...

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

Because the survey asked respondents to choose their top N items. The decision to split the Championship has only minor effects on cost for most teams.

True. Ranking cost #4 could mean, at least and in no particular order:
- Cost doesn't matter to me.
- This split doesn't affect my costs as significantly as it affects other things I want to check off.
- If the CMP doesn't give me 1, 2, and/or 3, cost doesn't matter because because I'm not going to fundraise (even some minimum reasonable cost) to go--e.g. I'll go to another regional, or save it for IRI, or build a better robot, or put it in the bank, or...
- And probably at least several other reasons. No need to jump to conclusions about respondents.

[jman4747]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

Because the survey asked respondents to choose their top N items. The decision to split the Championship has only minor effects on cost for most teams.

I'm working of the assumption that they are using the survey to see what they can change in both the near and far future to get people what they want. Money being 5th sounds like costs can go up for other things which for many they can't.

[Citrus Dad]

One question we asked was just a simple ‘How do you feel about having two FIRST Championships starting in 2017?’ with an answer of 1 representing ‘Strongly Oppose’, an answer of 5 identified as “Neither Oppose nor Favor” and an answer of 10 identified as “Strongly Favor”. The average answer to this questions among all respondents was 4.45, somewhat below the 5 "Neither Oppose nor Favor" rating.

This statement is misleading. Based on the graphic, the respondents to the survey oppose the championsplit 62.5% to 37.5% (after removing the '"5s"). That's a pretty overwhelming landslide in opposition. I'm not sure if a presidential candidate has ever exceeded that in the popular vote. The decision looks to be deeply, deeply unpopular.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

This statement is misleading. Based on the graphic, the respondents to the survey oppose the championsplit 62.5% to 37.5% (after removing the '"5s"). That's a pretty overwhelming landslide in opposition. I'm not sure if a presidential candidate has ever exceeded that in the popular vote. The decision looks to be deeply, deeply unpopular.

That's actually a very interesting comparison. Wikipedia tells me no; the highest popular vote take home was LBJ in '64 with 61.05%. This means that no US president since 1824* has had this level of a popular vote mandate. Granted, even the US has better voter turn out than this. *First available data.

[grstex]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

This statement is misleading. Based on the graphic, the respondents to the survey oppose the championsplit 62.5% to 37.5% (after removing the '"5s"). That's a pretty overwhelming landslide in opposition. I'm not sure if a presidential candidate has ever exceeded that in the popular vote. The decision looks to be deeply, deeply unpopular.

26+11+11+7=55%. I don't know where you're getting 62.5%. Even if you split the 12% of Neutral responses, that brings you to 61%. But splitting neutral responses really wouldn't be fair analysis. That's like counting undecided voters as going to one candidate or another, when they've clearly stated they're undecided.

[Knufire]

55/88 = 62.5, neutral voters were removed from the total as well. So 62.5% of respondents who did not answer neutral were in the opposing range, which is exactly what his statement said.

[grstex]

Originally Posted by Knufire

55/88 = 62.5, neutral voters were removed from the total as well.

I see. But that doesn't actually represent the response to the survey. That's only a poll of those who are biased one way or the other. It's not like the neutral opinions don't count.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Basel A

I don't think you can look at this data and reasonably say "most of FRC is opposed to two Championships," especially when the nonvoters likely don't care/are neutral.

It's not 62% of respondents, but you can absolutely look at the data and say that: 55% of respondents are opposed to two Championships. That's most.

We can speculate all we want about the opinions of the people who didn't vote, but there's nothing to delineate the reasonableness of those speculations.

Originally Posted by grstex

I see. But that doesn't actually represent the response to the survey. That's only a poll of those who are biased one way or the other. It's not like the neutral opinions don't count.

It's a measure of mandate that's intended to elucidate the misleading nature of the "average" purported in the blog. As yet we don't know of any way to properly center the data (the actual average of 1 to 10 is 5.5, whereas neutral is a "5"). Directly calculating the relationship between those who fall on one side or the other of neutral provides another sort of insight into the flaw in the scale.

[grstex]

Originally Posted by Siri

It's not 62% of respondents, but you can absolutely look at the data and say that: 55% of respondents are opposed to two Championships. That's most.

We can speculate all we want about the opinions of the people who didn't vote, but there's nothing to delineate the reasonableness of those speculations.

It's a measure of mandate that's intended to elucidate the misleading nature of the "average" purported in the blog. As yet we don't know of any way to properly center the data (the actual average of 1 to 10 is 5.5, whereas neutral is a "5"). Directly calculating the relationship between those who fall on one side or the other of neutral provides another sort of insight into the flaw in the scale.

But you can't say "62.5% of respondents oppose the split." That's just not true. the "mandate" is that 55% oppose the split. you CAN'T just discard 12% of the responses. That's more misleading than average from the blog.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by grstex

But you can't say "62.5% of respondents oppose the split." That's just not true. the "mandate" is that 55% oppose the split. you CAN'T just discard 12% of the responses. That's more misleading than average from the blog.

I agree that the statement "62.5% of respondents oppose the split" is not true. I suspect everyone does; it's math. As a side note, the statement "the respondents to the survey oppose the championsplit 62.5% to 37.5% (after removing the '"5s")" is completely true.

However, unless you have a mathematical or industry standard to support the conclusion that 62.5% is more misleading than 4.45, I disagree. At the very least, Richard actually told us directly what his calculation was in the midst of a discussion that already took issue with the neutrality of the 5 average. Frank left his misleading calculation to be discovered, which is a huge problem in itself. I don't think that this was intentional by Frank. A very big part of this problem is that this is an intuitive scale on its face, but he should've done his homework before making a highly misleading and unqualified statement that included both the term 'average' and the term 'neither oppose nor favor'.

The correct 'intuitive' truth that we're looking for--i.e. what the average looks like when centered about neutral--is somewhere between Richard's calculation and Frank's average. There's no way to access it. Do you have a better method of getting closer? This is an iterative issue; Karthik took one approach, I tried another averaging technique.

[Mike Schreiber]

As someone who has participated in the planning and execution of customer surveys and clinics before, I'm just going to leave this here for future reference.

Likert Scale