I’m sure I’m not the first person to bring this up. But I noticed some interesting behavior at the New England District Championships and I’m curious if anyone else has seen some examples. Every time I left the pits and went out onto the field, it felt like 3467 was playing. Despite my dumb post a few weeks ago, I take notice of everything they do because they are fantastic (and the current frontrunners in NH robotics imo.). Feel like I should be able to tag by Robotics team number.
I just circled back and actually looked at the schedules:
I then noticed that 3467 played in:
Q5
Q12 Q17 Q27 Q32 Q39
Q46 Q54
Q67 Q73 Q78
Q84
Whereas we (138) played in:
Q1
Q9 Q18 Q28 Q33 Q40
Q50 Q55
Q61 Q74 Q79
Q84
I just found it interesting. Other than the match where we played against each other, in 7 out of the 11 remaining qual matches they were playing while we were on deck. Maybe this is normal? Feels odd in 45 team tournaments for this to happen. Felt like every single time I went to the field they’d be out there.
there must be some smarts in the match generation algorithm to avoid giving you really quick turnarounds. It almost seems like there is some sort of captain slot and then teams get set on a set schedule? I’m not sure.
Curious if anyone else noticed anything like this. Can’t imagine I’m the only one that has seen like this.
… except it’s not random, we know this, nor does the scheduler have any knowledge of team strength. The only reason there are tons of examples such as yours is down to observation bias feeding into proportionally bias. No one bats an eye when this happens to two rookies.
Sure the case(s) you presented is unlikely, but it is far from unprecedented.
It’s not random… the only random thing is the random seed used to randomize teams at the beginning for the schedules before it picks to optimal one. Again I will bring up observation bias feeding into proportionally bias.
All the examples thus far have been with more well known teams, people are looking for these things and may feel “cheated” when they have to play 118, or 254, or 5460 3 times at an event (this happening at back to back events is just bad luck). You wouldn’t feel this way if you were playing against a team with a kit drivetrain only for 3/12 matches. As far as the proportionality bias thing, because a team plays 118, or 254, or 5460 3 times all of a sudden this can ONLY be explained by some equally large coverup . The FTAFIRST Technical Advisor doesn’t have it out for certain teams, this is just how the scheduler is built.
Bullet point 2 vs 3 is of particular interest to this thread (screenshot pulled from current manual)
I just wanna piggyback onto this because this is something I’ve noticed people often find frustrating about schedules: on average you’ll play against any team more than you play with them. Each match you have 2 teammates and 3 opponents.
While a lot of the schedules in this thread are insanely stacked, they’re outliers. In fact Statbotics rates the schedule you replied to as a 0.47 (ie. almost perfectly balanced, just barely (insignificantly) favouring its owner).
Another schedule in this thread does have a score of 0.73 (moderately unfavourable for the owner), but a team they highlighted being against multiple times was scored 0.92 (significantly unfavourable). The poster’s team had an expected loss of 1.75 RP while the highlighted team had an expected loss of 4.15 RP…
TL;DR there’s no conspiracy against your team. This is just unfortunately how the schedule works. If your team is strong, you will consistently be the difference maker in matches, especially in a game like Charged Up. If your team isn’t a powerhouse, then a handful of ranks probably doesn’t make a difference to you - 1st and 3rd is a huge difference, but 16th and 18th doesn’t affect anything save for one or two district points at worst.
I am not complaining about the opponents. I just find it odd that we were scheduled to play the same team 3 consecutive matches in a row. Followed by doing it again the very next week. The opponent is not the concern. We are all friends and just found it odd. Each match was fairly balanced and could have gone either way. This was questioned by both teams at Macomb. FIRST stated the schedule was within the requirements. I wonder if they could look for triple plays (back to back to back) in the future.
For sure this is odd, may be the first time something this specific has ever happened in FRCFIRST Robotics Competition. The chances of it happening to these two teams in particular very low. The chance of it happening to any pair of teams (especially from the same geographic area)? Quite a bit higher.
I would be more concerned about the shoe I would have to eat if I called out this exact scenario on week one of build.
You are right. You are going to notice it when its a team like that.
My question though, 3, in a 40 team tournament surely the scheduler could do a little better than 3 matchups against that team? Regardless of the team. Goes both ways in this case… could significantly swing a teams SOS either way. Facing the same team 3 times kinda tells me the scheduler didn’t do its job? if that was its 3rd priority? Or maybe by saying its the 3rd priority you are saying it lost other tradeoffs
I know its likely a tricky algorithm to solve given the amount of needs it has.
I just made this post originally because it felt like as soon as I was able to see a pattern like that there might be something flawed in the algorithm? But then again some of those rules alone signal that there should be some patterns in the schedule. Just thought it was interesting.
At the OC regional we found it surprising that we had 5 red matches then 5 blue matches. Has this happened to anyone else before? It made bumper changes very quick:)
If you want to see another really bad schedule, check my team (1189)’s schedule from FIM states this year. Statbotics gives it a composite score of 0.90. (2nd worst across all 4 fields) As, for the reasons stated above, occurrences such as this are inevitable, (and it actually helped us in the end) it was still starting bad. (The reason I’m posting here isn’t to complain, as it led to my team’s best performance at states in our history, but merely to point out another particular example of what others have expressed.)
Yeah, happened this year to 2451 (Midwest I think) nice when it happens like that, just don’t need to worry too much about bumpers. 5 red, 6 blue. I think that is just the schedule maker in the back end flip flopping alliance colors and team driver positions to get close to equal distributions.
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