toughest regional in 2011?

[MarkoRamius1086]

How about this... Can we identify the "Hardest Regional" by week, and then decide from there? Otherwise this is a free-for-all. I would say do Weeks 1-6... and a seperate division for the Michigain Districts and Champs (No offense... and if anything that is a compliment to your competitiveness!)

Week 1:
Granite State --- New Jersey --- Finger Lakes --- Alamo

Week 2:
San Diego --- Florida --- WPI --- Lake Superior --- Greater Kansas City --- Pittsburg --- Wisconsin --- New York City

Week 2.5:
Israel

Week 3:
Arizona --- Sacremento --- Peachtree --- Boilermaker --- Bayou --- Chesapeake --- St. Louis --- Oklahoma --- Lone Star --- Seattle Olympic --- Seattle Cascade

Week 4:
Washington DC --- Waterloo --- Los Angeles --- Hawaii --- Midwest --- Long Island --- Oregon --- Palmetto

Week 5:
East Toronto --- West Toronto --- Silicon Valley --- Connecticut --- 10000 Lakes --- North Star --- Las Vegas --- Smokey Mountain

Week 6:
Colorado --- Boston --- North Carolina --- Buckeye --- Philadelphia --- Dallas --- Utah --- Virginia

Michigan:
Week 1:
Traverse City --- Kettering University

Week 2:
Waterford

Week 3:
West Michigan --- Detroit

Week 4:
Ann Arbor --- Niles

Week 5:
Livonia --- Troy

Week 6:
Michigan Champs


Best of luck this season!
Petrie

[Basel A]

Close, but Kettering over TC, Detroit over WM, AA over Niles, and Troy over Livonia.

[xSAWxBLADEx]

Originally Posted by Basel A

Close, but Kettering over TC, Detroit over WM, AA over Niles, and Troy over Livonia.

agreed

[Alpha Beta]

Originally Posted by Basel A

Close, but Kettering over TC, Detroit over WM, AA over Niles, and Troy over Livonia.

I don't think these are pre-listed in order of strength. It is unlikely that Colorado will be more competative than Dallas in week 6, although we will try our best to make it as competative as possible.

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Alpha Beta

I don't think these are pre-listed in order of strength. It is unlikely that Colorado will be more competative than Dallas in week 6, although we will try our best to make it as competative as possible.

Oh, I was only ranking the districts. I don't know enough about the out-of-state teams to rank the other events. Plus, you never know until you get there. TC could easily be tougher than Kettering this year. Every year, obscure teams come of the mist with great robots, or there's a rookie sensation. FRC has a huge season-to-season variability, besides some teams that seem to always excel.

[Tyler Hicks]

Originally Posted by Basel A

TC could easily be tougher than Kettering this year. Every year, obscure teams come of the mist with great robots, or there's a rookie sensation. FRC has a huge season-to-season variability, besides some teams that seem to always excel.

Agreed. And not to mention, have you seen the team list for WM? It's going to be very competitive.

[Racer26]

I know I'm the one that suggested the return of the BBQ/SAUCE metric. I'm wondering if theres a better way to judge regional difficulty.

I say this, because the BBQ/SAUCE method of assessing such will always show regionals at which teams like 1114, 2056, 217, 148, 254, 1625, and so on are in attendance as markedly harder to win. Teams with a disproportionately high number of banners will skew any regional they attend (as has happened with Waterloo and GTR East thanks to 1114.)

Any ideas for a better method?

[pandamonium]

IMO this whole blue banner thing is a wash. What if teams don't submit chairman's at that regional? In general I feel that FLR is undervalued, I am not saying that it is the best. Beeing week one hurts the competition in general. a large # of teams also going to the Rochester Rally preseason event counters this and helps it seem less like a week 1.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by pandamonium

IMO this whole blue banner thing is a wash. What if teams don't submit chairman's at that regional? In general I feel that FLR is undervalued, I am not saying that it is the best. Beeing week one hurts the competition in general. a large # of teams also going to the Rochester Rally preseason event counters this and helps it seem less like a week 1.

2009 saw the worst-performing robot that 1551 has ever put together. Neat design, just didn't play the game for squat.

2010 saw us picking 217 and 174 to join us in the top-seeded alliance.

So now we have a blue banner, but I don't think we're a fundamentally different team than we were in the past. We nailed the strategy for last year's game (though not as well as 469), and built a robot that excelled at enacting that strategy (at least on the first-week regional level... it kinda took a beating and decided to fall apart repeatedly at Championship). Yet there were other teams there that consistently do very well that last year were not all that impressive on the field.

My point being that the BBQ might not be all it's SAUCEd up to be -- sometimes teams are very surprising in both good and bad ways. Some teams are consistently awesome every year, teams to look up to and to aspire to be. Some teams are consistently middle-of-the-road in terms of robot performance, but can break out and do great things or break down and do poorly (on the field) in one particular game.

A further reason that BBQ might be skewed is that a single robot winning multiple regionals in one year can net a team multiple Blue Banners, while a team that has a robot as good or better that only wins one regional gets only one Blue Banner. Being tournament champions four times in one year, methinks, means a lot less than being tournament champions once for four separate years.

It's an interesting metric, but I'm not sure it's a good one for determining regional difficulty... And that's ignoring the fact that the number of data points are so small that if you tried to do any meaningful statistics on them, you'd get GIGO.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by pandamonium

IMO this whole blue banner thing is a wash. What if teams don't submit chairman's at that regional? In general I feel that FLR is undervalued, I am not saying that it is the best. Beeing week one hurts the competition in general. a large # of teams also going to the Rochester Rally preseason event counters this and helps it seem less like a week 1.

Got a better way of numerically ranking events? I'm listening and will do my best to implement it into my scripts.

[Tetraman]

Originally Posted by pandamonium

IMO this whole blue banner thing is a wash. What if teams don't submit chairman's at that regional? In general I feel that FLR is undervalued, I am not saying that it is the best. Beeing week one hurts the competition in general. a large # of teams also going to the Rochester Rally preseason event counters this and helps it seem less like a week 1.

I think FLR is different than any other regional, it's a miniature World Champs with all sorts of high and low caliber teams in heavy and friendly competition.

Anyway, A better way of ranking regionals would be to average out the winning and losing scores of each match each year, getting a Regional Average for both winning and losing. You'd want a good look at which regional scored the highest losing scores. Teams that scored 50 points and lost > Teams that scored 30 points and lost, and then see which regional scored the highest average points.

You'd have to do this for the past 2-3 years as each year's scoring ratio is different.

[hg273]

I'm not putting Autodesk Oregon into the running, but I was curious to see what our other regional was looking like, as well as to provide a comparison between what's reputed to be a top-flight regional (San Diego) with a more average one (Oregon). The difference is quite interesting (at least to scouting geeks like me ).

Here are the numbers:

BBQ:
San Diego - 1.1864
Autodesk Oregon - .5667

SAUCE:
San Diego - .8983
Autodesk Oregon - .4833

[Koko Ed]

I walked away from FLR thinking it was actually a little down this year (it was still pretty bottom heavy) but they have set the standard for every other regional to match with 8 triple digit scores (four of them did come in elims). It might be because defense is starting to show up a little more this week as well.

[Raul]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

I walked away from FLR thinking it was actually a little down this year (it was still pretty bottom heavy) but they have set the standard for every other regional to match with 8 triple digit scores (four of them did come in elims). It might be because defense is starting to show up a little more this week as well.

Wisconsin also had 8 triple digit scores.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Raul

Wisconsin also had 8 triple digit scores.

That doesn't surprise me.
As the competition went on Florida started getting more triple digit scores as was San Deigo.

One vent that I have huge expectations of because it's a week six event and has only two rookies and many many competitive teams is Philadelphia. Many regionals have alot of teams that don't belong in the elims, to be blunt, but there will probably be double digit teams who deserve to make the elims and will miss out in Phili due to the level of competition there.