Where do I ask for unicorns, I mean changes to the official stats?

[nuclearnerd]

I'm trying to follow IRI, and something keeps coming up that really bothers me. It has been a problem at every competition I've ever been at. Here it is:

Every team's "Rank" is set by "Rank Points", rather than "Rank Points / Match Played". I know it makes no difference come alliance selection, when everyone has played the same number of matches, but until then, it's really confusing to see teams slowly drop down the ranks between matches, and then shoot up to the top temporarily. Bother!

What would it take to change the "Rank" value showed by the official stats to the match-normalized calculation?

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

I'm trying to follow IRI, and something keeps coming up that really bothers me. It has been a problem at every competition I've ever been at. Here it is:

Every team's "Rank" is set by "Rank Points", rather than "Rank Points / Match Played". I know it makes no difference come alliance selection, when everyone has played the same number of matches, but until then, it's really confusing to see teams slowly drop down the ranks between matches, and then shoot up to the top temporarily. Bother!

What would it take to change the "Rank" value showed by the official stats to the match-normalized calculation?

In 2015 wasn't it average score?

This method is a lot better for seeing how many points you need to get in order to jump in the rankings. "We need 3 points to jump Team XYZ" is very useful.

Having two fields, one for actual rank, one for rank average, might work I guess.

[GeeTwo]

When you're halfway through the first round, where do you rank teams that have not played yet - their average is 0/0?

[Hitchhiker 42]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

When you're halfway through the first round, where do you rank teams that have not played yet - their average is 0/0?

I think in that case, the system should put them at the end (back), as you could use a secondary ranking system for that (absolute # ranking points).

[Kris Verdeyen]

I tried to adapt MLB's "games back" metric in the spreadsheet I used for my announcing. I'm convinced that it can work, though not that I did it yet.

I used RP since wins isn't as valuable a metric.

If PRP is the total number of ranking points possible (4 * number of matches played) for a given team, I computed (2 * PRP - RP) for each team. I subtracted each team's total from the leader's and divided by two.

This might be entirely equivalent to dividing a ranking score by the number of games, or there might be more happening there, but it does make those teams that are trailing in the rankings because they're a match behind pop out without a lot of searching.

edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_behind

[OccamzRazor]

How about instead of changing the ranking system we color code each line on the rankings live. There are plenty of ways to do this but I would think something like Green colors on the board are the teams that have played the "latest" number of matches (say 5 matches), orange is for teams that are down below that a match and are not current (4 matches played for example), and red for teams that are down two matches from the current (3 matches played) or have been carded so that their ranking is considered already.

Once all matches are played for that team turn the color to solid black.

I think it would be an easy change and a visual indicator that would fit the ranking style of any FRC game. There may be more intelligent ways to color code the rankings to mean something different that you guys can figure out I am sure.

[Mike Schreiber]

Originally Posted by OccamzRazor

How about instead of changing the ranking system we color code each line on the rankings live. There are plenty of ways to do this but I would think something like Green colors on the board are the teams that have played the "latest" number of matches (say 5 matches), orange is for teams that are down below that a match and are not current (4 matches played for example), and red for teams that are down two matches from the current (3 matches played) or have been carded so that their ranking is considered already.

Once all matches are played for that team turn the color to solid black.

I think it would be an easy change and a visual indicator that would fit the ranking style of any FRC game. There may be more intelligent ways to color code the rankings to mean something different that you guys can figure out I am sure.

Even if this is not implemented in FMS, it may be worth requesting from the folks at TBA or Spyder. This would make figuring out how far we'll move in rankings a lot easier.

[plnyyanks]

There's some great feedback in this thread! One reason we've been hesitant to modify the ranking display too much in TBA is that we don't want to cause any confusion about which columns are "official" and which ones aren't. However, I definitely agree that there are things we can tweak to make the display much more informative (we just have to clearly differentiate which numbers come from directly from FMS and which don't)

I think we can add a notion of "derived columns" to the rankings display on desktop: we can show a "match difference" outlining how many matches away from the max each team is (so it would show {-- (even), -1, -2, ...}). This could go in parentheses after the official "played" column. And we can also add RP/match.

This all gets a little trickier on mobile, because information density is hard.

If anyone would like to help build this for TBA, let me know and I'll help you get started! I've filed an issue to track the feature

[nuclearnerd]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

I think we can add a notion of "derived columns" to the rankings display on desktop: we can show a "match difference" outlining how many matches away from the max each team is (so it would show {-- (even), -1, -2, ...}). This could go in parentheses after the official "played" column. And we can also add RP/match.

This all gets a little trickier on mobile, because information density is hard.

If anyone would like to help build this for TBA, let me know and I'll help you get started! I've filed an issue to track the feature

That's awesome. Thanks Phil! My web programming skills are not up to the task myself, but I hope someone rises to the challenge. If the derived column(s) prove useful, we will have a clear example to show FIRST HQ to request an official change.

[ctt956]

What if there were two rankings? One would be the current ranking system, while the other would be teams ranked by how much they score in matches? It could just be based on their average score/alliance contribution in the matches they've played.

[CalTran]

Originally Posted by ctt956

What if there were two rankings? One would be the current ranking system, while the other would be teams ranked by how much they score in matches? It could just be based on their average score/alliance contribution in the matches they've played.

So making OPR/CCWM an official thing?

[ASD20]

Originally Posted by ctt956

What if there were two rankings? One would be the current ranking system, while the other would be teams ranked by how much they score in matches? It could just be based on their average score/alliance contribution in the matches they've played.

For what purpose? To try to estimate what a teams ranking will be or to try to assess how good teams are? If it's the latter, TBA already as OPR somewhere for the top n teams. If it's the former, OPR (or whatever modified version you like) has absolutely no correlation to the current ranking system. It will also never become an official stat, let alone ranking method, by FIRST because it completely goes against what FIRST believes in.