Is Scouting Beneficial?

It’s an insult to the idea that us regular shmoes only need to scout better.

https://i.imgur.com/ezjp5aV.png
https://i.imgur.com/1AU1rsx.png
some of 330’s accomplishments…

https://i.imgur.com/gRjrj4V.jpg

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Thanks @MikLast for the intro.

So, fun fact: if you check the dropdown on that TBA link you presumably clicked, you would find this on one of the pages:
image
And if you dig a bit more you might notice 7 consecutive regional wins or something. Weeeeird.

I dunno man, but we kept doing something and it just kept working. I guess I’ll let the scouts and strategists know they didn’t contribute anything to that or somethin.

Oh, I almost forgot. Get this, if you search “330” on CD, you might come across this thread for some context: Team 330 to Retire After 2019 Season

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First, I didn’t know you were part of a team that folded. My bad. I don’t follow posters here or the teams they are from. So that came off way worse than intended.

Second, I think you guys kept making good robots.

Sure, scouting alone won’t win you a regional, the robots on your alliance also have to be good. If you want guidance on how to make your robot better, then lashing out at scouting seems rather counterproductive. Fortunately, you have a community filled with bored people with lots of expertise with nothing better to do anyway, so I encourage you to take use of the resources at hand.

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perhaps

(some of them beg to differ)

If you want, you can go through the 2016 champs alliance. You might notice something weird with the rankings of the teams we decided to pick, despite being the 2nd seed captain.
If you then go and “scout” (I know, the horror) some of the matches those teams were in, especially 120, you might know why.

I’ve got an even better one. Check the rank we were on our 2015 champs division field, then check which overall pick # we were. Then check who won that division. I dunno, but those 2056 guys are on to something too.

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So far I’ve been accused of saying teams use scouting as a “trick” against other teams, and that I’m lashing out at scouting (teams that scout?). Again, we scout. I just don’t insist that our (or anyone’s) scouting has ever helped (or hurt) without any concrete evidence. No has provided any. The best is that teams that win, scout. But teams that lose scout too, and there’s way more of those.

The vast majority of teams lose. Besides that point, are you looking for empirical evidence that scouting helps team win?

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So if only teams 1-4 scout and all are on different alliances, you’d end up with a minimum 75% failure rate for scouting. I think using that metric is very… poor and hard to prove.

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I could do that. But as there’s no control group, no evidence of what would have happened had different picks been made, then it won’t really prove anything one way or another. Furthermore if those were the other teams scouting at those events, then what about all of the other teams that lost? Did they not scout/pick correctly?

Best summation of FRC scouting I’ve seen yet.

People who succeed in life, try. But people that don’t succeed try too, and there’s way more of those.

Show me the people who didn’t try yet succeeded on their own. I’mma go out on a whim here and say this is something you don’t totally need a control group for.

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I’m looking for empirical evidence that one scouting/pick strategy is better than another. Or evidence that a particular strategy worked at all.

I think the evidence has been provided to you. Look at Troy’s post above, but you also want proof that picking the next ranked team was not an equal strategy. That literally cannot be tested or proven.

You’ve got your analogy wrong. In this case, I would be arguing that trying is not a huge factor in success in life, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Bingo. Someone gets it.

The people (or teams) that did well without “trying” just so happen to be a statistical minority in both the case at hand and my analogy.

Moving on to data:

Rank 1 picks rank 2, loses to rank 7 and 18

Rank 1 picks rank 2, loses to rank 8 and 32

Rank 1 picks rank 2, loses to rank 11 and 13

(not throwing these teams under the bus or saying their scouting was bad, just providing data)
If you want, I could also just post pictures of all the champs winning banners since alliances were a thing, but that doesn’t seem to be working.

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If you want to have the mentality that nothing that has been tested or proven should be accepted as true, go ahead. You could even argue that nothing is true since we have no clue as to how accurate our senses are for measuring the “real world”. But if you take that stance in life you’re not gonna get very far.

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Mods, this is potentially a relevant question with a followup depending on their response, so please let this slide:

Are you by chance a sports fan? Baseball, football, etc? I want to make an analogy if you do, so this is a serious question.

I think I can prove that teams who pick more in line with Elo will advance further on average than teams who pick less in line with Elo.

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