Sorry for the confusion, I did mean regional banners.
Well…
Getting back on track, the Cheesy poofs, team 254 are at it again. They are kicking some real butt in Hawaii. An awesome robot.
In response to the questions about 103 attending the Championship…
Maybe…Maybe not…but…maybe…hehehe.
The team is considering attending, and as a mentor for the team and a volunteer for the Championship, I would LOVE to see them go. This year has definitely been a great year for 103 and they are certainly confident with the robot and drive team. A trip to the Championship would certainly be a very interesting and competitive one…we’ll just have to see how it all plays out…:yikes:
In any case, week 5 is going to be a very interesting one to say the least. Being at Philadelphia, I can say there is a large handful of great teams and the competition will be fierce!
Great Lakes should be a good regional. With many impressive bot’s beeing feilded there is sure to be a lot of competion. Personall I believe that the chickens(217) will get there 3rd regional (there bot is a force of nature ranked with; fire, wind, water, air, earth, thunder…chickens).
The thing to look for at these regionals should be defense, many teams with a regional or two under their belt will look to defense as a way to stop powerful scoring machines in their tracks. With all honesty most hurdlers are not that good with out a trackball, most are very slow, and with out the ability to score every few lap (or every) a team’s offense is ground to a hault. So if a robot breaks it will most likely be playing defense since one defense robot can (sometimes) halve an oppent’s alliance score. Also the new alliance selections i think will be selected the powerful hurdlers; first pick another hurdler, second a good defensive robot.
Also I hate to say it but now that the competion season is grinding down (only new york left after saturday) the finals will be dirty at west michigan I saw around 1 or 2 per match interfering with the hurdler I expect to see 2 to 3 this week per finals match (after semi-finals). This is many teams last shot at atlanta and I expect that many will be playing like it fighting tooth and nail for every lap, hurdle, and trackball that they can get.
just an opinion to disreguard as quickly as others
cody.
p.s. winning alliance great lakes regional; 217, 27, 1718 (all very good and all can play good defense and offense).
A great alliance, but no way will one of those 3 be around for a 3rd alliance member pick.
Wow… :yikes: I’m impressed we got the mention! Thanks!!
There was actually a six-way tie for first at Finger Lakes, and we squeeked by with the highest tie breaker. All were good, of course, and some were undoubtedly actually a bit better than we humble Warlocks - but don’t let my team know I said that!
Having worked some mathematical “magic” (hey - we’re Warlocks, right?) with all the match scores in prior competitions, though, I have to report that our sister team, #0378, who helped our team get started several years ago, had almost an identical potential for point-scoring in that competition - and they actually advanced to the final round, getting the silver.
I bring up **#0378 **(Circuit Stompers) because they are also here, at the GTR - they really deserve equal mention in any prediction-making. Expect to see them in the top 8!
As best I can tell (from that mathematical analysis), the top 10 at GTR should be, in order:
1114, 2056, 1507, 0378, 0188, 1310, 1565, 2200, 1006, and 1503.
Sound reasonable? That’s just how the numbers came out. There’s nothing subjective to it, but there are teams who haven’t played in other Regionals yet that could be missing from having been considered. As far as “The Great Divide” goes, how’s this: 2056 came out about 50% ahead of the next best team (us), while the next seven in the top 10 all came out within 50% of us. My apologies to #1676, who have been mentioned elsewhere on this thread, but didn’t fare so well in that analysis. 
Hopefully, your improvements will change things markedly. Hey - we have an elevator, too!
Anyway, “that’s my prediction, and I’m sticking to it!” 
what numbers were you using, if you don’t mind me asking
and I am amazed we made the list haha!! not that we shouldn’t be there…
I may be partial, but you may have forgotten or not have heard that Team 1158 is completing in our home regional, even though being a lap bot, we lost in the semi-finals of a very strong San Diego Regional. And this is even picking 5th and alliance partners breaking down.
After watching 40, 69, and 20 in thier first matches, 40 will win the regional, hands down.
20 was one of the strongest robots at the far stronger FLR field.
They will at the very least be a finalist. if not champion.
69 and 40 both looked a lot like I expected so far this morning, team 20 didn’t look as good as they did in pre-ship practice or at FLR, I would give them a few more matches I bet the pick it up again.
I saw 25, I saw 103…and 1114 will eat their lunch. I have seen them, they got everything right this year.
In Minnesota, look for 525 and 93 to team up in eliminations. Those two robots have easily the most effective hybrid modes in that competition. If they do team up, they will be very, very difficult to beat. Also look for 2169 and 2177 to do well, they both have solid hurdling machines.
Well one of the team advisors or mentors told us yesturday in the morning that you guys registered yesturday morning.
lol
I personally think that 103 would at least have a shot at 1114, I have doubts about the consistency of 25’s shooter. Hope they can get that better.
Basically, it’s what’s called a least-squares estimation (also known as maximum likelihood). You apply a basic optimization technique to determine what set of numbers fits the data (all the alliance scores, in qualifiers, for a given competition) the best. “The best” means it gives the lowest sum of the squares of the errors. (Hey - I call my self “Optimizer” for a reason! 
).
For an example of an “error” from today’s scores, in Q46 247, 1305, and 1565 were teamed up. From previous competitions, I had calculated ratings of 17.41, 10.04, and 25.55, respectively. So I would have expected you folks to score in the neighborhood of 17.41+10.04+25.55 = 53.00 points. You actually scored 88, so I’d say you had a great game. The “error” was 88-53=35 points (which is a fair amount larger than usual - usually, I think 20 is kinda big).
Anyway, if you think in terms of not having those ratings to start with, and SOLVING for them, so as to minimize the sum of the squares of these errors you would get for all the alliances in each qualifying match in the competition, that’s what the method does. I know - it’s complicated. You end up solving N linear equations in N unknowns, where N is the number of teams (66, in this case). I think it probably gives you a decent guideline for how good a team is, to within (I’m guessing) maybe 3 pts, even though you can come up with all kinds of (legitimate) criticisms - for example, it doesn’t account for the value of defense, or how well certain teams might work together.
Like I’ve said, though - at least it’s objective, and it entertains a math guy like myself.
Unfortunately for me, I can’t run today’s results because I never did manage to install the software I need to run my code on this laptop, it seems like some of the teams have gotten significantly better, and there are 30 teams for which I have no previous ratings at all. I have to settle for seeing the results after the fact.
BTW: 1114 came out with 48.82 in Midwest and 73.06 in Waterloo.
525 has one of the best autonomous modes I have seen yet…this and a really good hurdling mechanism make them very difficult to beat. I’m looking forward to seeing how it all plays out in the last seeding matches tomorrow as well as the final rounds.
Shhhh!!! Yes we are going, I just wanted to make it interesting! We can’t wait to see what’s going to happen down there!
I love how stunningly accurate your predictions are… considering team 102 was a regional winner.
Not too bad there. 525 and 93 (2 great hurdlers) paired up and stormed through elims without a single loss.
Despite chasing pneumatic gremlins all weekend and some electrical/code problems that limited maneuverability in the elims 2175 managed to be semifinalists which I would consider a solid outing.
That makes 3/3 for MN!