Don’t.
You can’t expect anything to change if you’re not going to step up and try to make that change. Even if that means calling out everyone you see/hear making that mistake. As Racer26 pointed out, it’s been a WORLD Championship for over a decade. As a community, we have no excuse for continuing to call it nationals.
Mr. Zondag,
Thanks for the information on the signal noise ratio, I will be showing my students tomorrow. It reminds me of Cp and Cpk in determining process capability, but with those you have upper and lower spec limits to base off of. Here we don’t so I’m glad to know a way to “judge” the equality of the competitors.
Isn’t higher score means poor defense? If you watch some of the matches you see robots hurrying like mouse scurrying with a cheese bit!
Hats off to the drivers! Do the experience carpal tunnel syndrome?::rtm::
Check out the elimination matches. While the quals are usually an offensive burst by all teams, eliminations is where defense usually shines. I don’t think anyone normally tries to play defense during the quals unless you’re in MAR, a defense heavy region.
This kind of reminds me of the Sharp ratio for portfolio selection. So FIRST is relevant to engineering, sports, and now economics!
Also there were a total of four FiM teams that turned down MSC; 216, 1596, 94, and 815. Don’t know anything about MAR. 216 has already stated that they were stuck in international shipping. I’d be interesting to see if any of the other 3 teams had nonfinancial reasons for not attending.
I know I for one, received some defense in quals. As for carpal tunnel syndrome, I haven’t had any effects from driving thus far… but I did experience lack-of-sleep syndrome, but that’s probably just a coincidence. 
A total of 16 teams declined MAR this year. We had to go down to the 65th rank team just to get 49 robots to attend. The list of teams who declined in order of points are:
341
365
2016
25
1367
219
1495
4361
3123
136
1647
1807
555
3151
1168
203
The top four of those teams (341, 365, 2016 and 25) had already qualified to go to Championships and didn’t need to attend MAR. Those four teams also represent some of the best ground loaders in MAR. Only five other teams with ground loading attended Lehigh, and most weren’t as good as these teams.
Ow…flashbacks…brain hurting…:
Also, IRI rulz.
I won’t attempt to guess how other areas might play. I can, however, assure you that Michigan teams play some hard-nosed defense in the qualification rounds.
We had to repair our bumpers after our first district, and then completely rebuild them before states. We also had to bend our lift system back into square, and repeatedly tighten our wheel hardware and re-rivet support structures. Almost all that damage was incurred during hard fought qualification rounds.
This was the first year we had to repair our bumpers whatsoever. Things got physical out on the field.
I think the most physical/exciting individual matchup I saw this year was between 469 and 2834 at Detroit. 469 was unstoppable and 2834 did their best to do the impossible. The results were amazing. Although in the end, despite 2834’s amazing D effort, 469 still got the job done.
My vote for best defense goes to 141 (on 469), 2337 (on 2959), and 4384 (on 2767). The defense made even the best offensive bots look like fools on the field. Some of that can be attributed to drive trains, but a lot of it really just comes down to driver anticipation.
Can’t wait to see how the game evolves at Champs.
Edit: Video evidence thanks to 2337! (I’m noticing a trend of excellence! You guys rock!)
Q27 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clvrXPggjAg (141 v 469)
Q40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCTSlblRfz4 (2337 v 2959)
Q79 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5XN6hUouxQ (4834 v 2767)
2337 shut down 2959 in math 40, that was such an awesome match to watch. They drive really smart, and they’ve got a tough bot that can get a defensive job done. I’m really glad that they made it champs, they had a very powerful showing of defense at MSC. Literally, 2959 only got the 18 points in auton and a climb. Very impressive to shut down a district winner like that, even though 2337’s alliance couldn’t quite get the win.
To add a little more data:
Watch 123 shut down 2000, one of the top scorers at MSC. (This was one of the most inspired games of defense I’ve seen in a while).
Watch 1718 / 51 joust.
Watch 2337 hit 2145 Hazmats so hard that all their frisbees exit the top of their machine, vertically. This wasn’t defense… but the collision was ridiculous.
Too bad we couldn’t make states.