As part of the OK regional webcast, I built a page to display the match results from the Twitter feed, with a simple visualization of bridge balancing. You can view it for all of the regionals with Twitter data here: http://www.botsnlinux.net/frcwebcasts/
Browsing through them, I was a little surprised how stark the differences were between the regionals. At the high end, the Livonia District has had a coopertition balance nearly every match, and several matches where all 6 robots got off the ground. On the other hand, the Oklahoma Regional is about 14% on the coopertition bridge, and there’s been an average of about 1 robot balanced per match. Obviously the level of competition is very different between these events, but I didn’t expect this much a difference. Thoughts?
PS - If anyone wants to see/use my code, just PM me.
It’s something I’ve noticed a lot in watching webcasts, that the Michigan District teams have put a lot more work into the co-op bridge then other teams at other events. Not sure if it is a byproduct of the quaility of teams or if the district model promoted it much more, because of the need to seed higher for points.
Thanks for putting this together, Steven - it’s a really helpful way of quickly seeing the balancing results! I noticed that the winning alliance (and score) are bolded for each match… while that can be noticed, perhaps a more noticeable way of highlighting the winning alliance/score would be good? Italicizing might stand out more?
Yeah, it is clear that most of the events this weekend haven’t made significant use of the co-op bridges. The two Michigan Districts and the Connecticut Regional seem to be the distinct outliers. I would be more likely to attribute that to having a competition with a deep, well-practiced field, rather than the district model. As you can see, the week 3 MI events had substantially fewer co-op balances (although still more than most other events). All of those competing in MI this weekend have played in one event already, if not two… that seems like a big leg-up on the balancing… Similarly, many of those competing in Connecticut have already attended one event. These teams also have had more practice balancing and likely more fully realize the importance of co-op balances.
^At Virginia, the co-op bridge wasn’t even balanced until Saturday, despite numerous attempts. I think at NCR, with 27 of 53 teams playing in a prior event, the co-op bridge will be balanced 75% of the time or more.
CT relied heavily on Coopertition. Even if they didn’t have a chance at beating their alliance on score points, they would balance with them for the coopertition points for better ranking. Also had quite a few 2x2x2 balances. Can’t wait until tomorrow’s matches!