Hi,
We agree. The DiscoBots did a great job at Worlds.
Everyone seems to have come down very hard on meatboy123 for his comment. He is correct that the DiscoBots had an unusually easy schedule by no fault of their own. This is, in our opinion, one of the largest inequalities in any VEX event. Just by the law of probabilities, some robots will have very easy schedules, some will have average schedules, and some will have extremely difficult schedules.
Now for the facts. The DiscoBots had the easiest schedule in the Math division. We have an internal iOS app that we generate these statistics. The numbers are the numbers. The DiscoBots played with an alliance partner with an average rank of 20.3. They played against opponents with an average rank of 56.8. Since there were 84 teams, the mean would be 42.
The DiscoBots alliance partners had rankings of 29, 4, 7, 51, 49, 6, 36, 10, 3, and 2. Six out of their ten alliance partners were in the top ten. Their opponents ranks were 53, 64, 70, 80, 56, 26, 55, 65, 27, 21, 84, 72, 76, 57, 77, 79, 35, 48, 47, and 44. None of their opponents were in the top 20, and they only had one opponent in the top 25. In fact, this schedule was the easiest schedule in all five divisions.
Contrast this with 1064A (OPS - Nebraska Nerd Herd). They had the second hardest schedule in the Math division. They played with alliance partners whose average rank was 61.0, and they played against opponents with an average rank of 36.8. Their alliance partners had the following ranks: 56, 41, 79, 77, 76, 75, 58, 22, 67, and 59. They only had one alliance partner in the top 40. Their opponents had the following ranks: 30, 72, 35, 57, 47, 27, 28, 71, 13, 8, 5, 10, 63, 15, 74, 17, 49, 43, 7, and 65. Four out of their twenty opponents were in the top ten, and they played against ten opponents in the top 30.
Unfortunately, 1064A played on average (combining the strengths of both their alliance partners and opponents) 61.3 robots more difficult than 2587Z. If 1064A would have had the schedule that the DiscoBots had, they would have most likely finished in the top 10. Their fate was sealed as soon as the schedules were generated. If the DiscoBots would have had as hard a schedule as 1064A, they most likely would not have finished in the Top 5 or even 10.
9090C (T-VEX) also had a difficult schedule. They played with alliance partners with an average rank of 52.5 and against opponents with an average rank of 42.7, with an overall average of 51.8.
Some robots go to events and never really understand why they have a great robot and did not perform as expected. Sometimes they have extremely hard schedules. Some robots go to competitions and perform above their ability. They might have just lucked out and had a very easy schedule. We use these statistics to determine whether a robot should have really been higher or lower in the rankings, depending on their schedule strength.
I hope this analysis helps in this discussion by our use of hard statistics. It is very unfortunate that over 400 robots show up to the world competition and there are extremely large inequalities in schedule strength. In the future, we may release all of the data for all divisions and all robots at Worlds (time permitting).
TexasVex
