As the 2014 build season approaches I would like to better prepare myself for more of a leadership role in the strategy component of my team. I figure a good way to do this would be read up on some more general strategy and to learn more outside of what I’ve learned from the past two years. I’m wondering what books and other resources would be recommended to accomplish this? (I’ve already seen Karthik’s strategy seminar)
Have you read The New Cool? It’s pretty great for insight on how an elite team is run as well as an enlightening tale of team 1717.
Make sure you spend a good deal of time listing out every possible strategy and defining why you pick certain ones over others. You may write one off quickly that actually would be beneficial. Make sure your team really defines everything about their strategy before you start designing parts of your robot. You shouldn’t be able to design anything until you know what your robot will be doing.
Although not exactly “reading,” the EWCP podcasts have some great information on strategy and game analysis from years past.
To get better at strategy, like most other things you should practice. Try to find a good method to create the best strategy for some of the old (frc, ftc and vex) games. Then see how you did and where you went wrong in your process. The key to doing this is being completely blind to any strategies or particular robots that were played that year.
I’ve heard the EWCP guys recommend The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, which talks about data-based prediction techniques
It’s a fairly popularized view of statistics, but relatively informative and thought provoking look nonetheless.