[OCCRA]: Rankings as of 11/02

[Mike Martus]

Attached are the rankings for teams in the OCCRA competition 2006. This is after 3 events.

We still have Detroit Catholic Thursday Nov 9 and the County Championship 11/18.

On the 18th teams will play 2 seeding matches. Then the Tournament.

Your team ranking is based upon the best of a maximum of 12 matches. Some teams may actually be playing 18 total matches. Only the BEST 12 will be used for ranking. The 12 best scores are added and divided by 12 to get the average. Teams with less than 12 matches are still divided by 12.

Tournament structure.
We will be posting a detail of the structure and how it will work in a short time here. Same as last year - except this year we have more teams and there MAY be a bye involved.

All teams play in the County Championship.

If your team is NOT attending the Championship please contact Mr. McIntyre with that information.

[Josh Murphy]

Is anyone surprised as to where they are at so far???

[iheartpi]

Unless I am mistaking team number 2, Roeper, was not at the womens competition at LTU and team number 3, West Bloomfield was. The excel document seems to have the points earned by team #3 under team #2 for this tournament.

[CBaoth]

Originally Posted by iheartpi

Unless I am mistaking team number 2, Roeper, was not at the womens competition at LTU and team number 3, West Bloomfield was. The excel document seems to have the points earned by team #3 under team #2 for this tournament.

I think you are correct being as... we dont have any women on the team (i dont think?)

Edit: although this brings up the scoring system being rigged against teams like ours.

[Mike Martus]

Originally Posted by CBaoth

I think you are correct being as... we dont have any women on the team (i dont think?)

Edit: although this brings up the scoring system being rigged against teams like ours.

I am reposting the standings as there was a small error.

[woody]

Originally Posted by CBaoth

Edit: although this brings up the scoring system being rigged against teams like ours.

The scoring system isnt rigged... its an incentive to bring more girls into the competition and provide them greater roles within the teams.

[Mike Martus]

Originally Posted by woody

The scoring system isnt rigged... its an incentive to bring more girls into the competition and provide them greater roles within the teams.

The OCCRA leadership and Oakland Schools is sensitive to gender equity. The number of female engineers in the real world is quite low compared with the male engineers. The effort here is to encourage each team to seek out the female within their school population and demonstrate how much fun building robots can be. Applying all the math and science concepts to a hands on project may just be the spark needed to propel them into engineering as an education choice.

Having the event be part of the regular schedule puts greater emphasis on the importance from the very start of the season. No longer an afterthought, the involvement of the female in the entire team concept from start to finish was the goal.

We stand behind our decision as a good one. Having 4 events and counting the best 12 matches takes into consideration a team that has no females and keeps them competitive in the other three events.

[SWIM]

Originally Posted by Mike Martus

The OCCRA leadership and Oakland Schools is sensitive to gender equity. The number of female engineers in the real world is quite low compared with the male engineers.

So you admit it is perfectly normal for a team to have a low percentage of women? Moreover, by definition, we can't force anyone to take an elective class. The class is completly equal-opportunity, there are no gender restrictions whatsoever. Isn't that the best we can do?

No longer an afterthought, the involvement of the female in the entire team concept from start to finish was the goal.

It may have been a typo, but it's actually pretty accurate in Roeper's case: there really is only one female on our team.

We stand behind our decision as a good one. Having 4 events and counting the best 12 matches takes into consideration a team that has no females and keeps them competitive in the other three events.

Would you not agree that this policy is unfair to the smaller teams? It's not hard to find the ~6 girls you need to participate in the women's competition when you have a large school or an entire district as one team, but for a school with under 200 people in grades 9-12, and a team of about 12ish people that show up to competitions, we'd need fully half of the team to be female, which is a bit of a ridiculous requirement, wouldn't you agree?

[iheartpi]

I have personally always thought that the women's competition tacked on at the end of the season as an afterthought was almost a waste of time. For our team making the women's comp part of the regular season was a great thing because making it part of the season convinced the guys on our team to show up. Not to mention that both our team manager and assistant manager were female, and they were the drive team for the first couple of tournaments, and the pneumatics and electrical experts. So for our team it was pretty much just another tournament, which in my opinion is how it should be. As a woman I resent the fact that teams have to be given an incentive such as a strategic advantage in order to persuade females, and I equally resent the fact that women, especially those at our school, have to be begged and persuaded to join the team even when they know it is something that they are interested in. Hopefully in the future things such as a Women's Competition will be obsolete.

I think that although making the Womens Comp. part of the regular season puts some teams at a slight disadvantage, if they attend the rest of the tournaments they still get to drop their 2 lowest scores.

A shout out to Roeper since you have only competed in 8 matches thus far, you should compare your total for those matches to that of the first place team's (47) best 8 matches:
team 47 195 pts in best 8 matches
team 2 158 pts in best 8 matches
This is really the best way to get an idea of where you will stand after the next competition if teams perform at approximately the same ability level.

Anyone else want to give us their two cents worth?

[Allison K]

The way I see it, the Women's Competition is an opportunity for teams to get more matches. I'm may be wrong, but I think in the past teams were only allowed to attend 3 of the 4 regionals. This year, teams can attend all of them.

As the supervising adult of a very small team (7 students total) I understand some of the difficulties. My one suggestion for next year would be to make the Women's competition a week 3 or 4 regional. As of week 2, our team (and I think many others) were still working out major problems with the robot and I think it was really hard on the students to be splitting the team up so early in the season.

On a different note, I'm not a huge fan of the point-based ranking system (being from a rather defensive bunch), but a deviation from the W-L-T system makes things sorta interesting. In the long run it doesn't matter anyway. I want my team to do well, and I want them to win, but there's more to robotics than rankings.

~Allison

[Josh Murphy]

Ok I look at the womens tournament as giving the females a chance to show what they are all about. It actually gives them something to look for and work for or we would have a low number of females. The scoring system is not rigged and it does not screw a team. Roeper you will end up with 14 matches and be able to throw 2 of the worst scores away. Some will end up with 18 and be able to throw 6 away. The womens tournament was our worst performance of the year, but some how managed to take 1st. We will be able to throw away 6 because we had the females. It only takes 3 females to be at the womens tournament, 2 drivers and a human player. So if you can not get 3 females then just drop it and deal with it that is how it is.

[Josh Murphy]

Originally Posted by Josh Murphy

Ok I look at the womens tournament as giving the females a chance to show what they are all about. It actually gives them something to look for and work for or we would have a low number of females. The scoring system is not rigged and it does not screw a team. Roeper you will end up with 14 matches and be able to throw 2 of the worst scores away. Some will end up with 18 and be able to throw 6 away. The womens tournament was our worst performance of the year, but some how managed to take 1st. We will be able to throw away 6 because we had the females. It only takes 3 females to be at the womens tournament, 2 drivers and a human player. So if you can not get 3 females then just drop it and deal with it that is how it is.

Also team 9 and 573 are an all male school, you don't see them complaining do you?

[SWIM]

Originally Posted by woody

The scoring system isnt rigged... its an incentive to bring more girls into the competition and provide them greater roles within the teams.

It also rapes small teams that don't have enough girls to participate in a women's only competition.