Power Rankings Idea

VEX V5 General Discussion General Forum
#1

This idea kind of came up in the scouting thread, and I decided to flesh my thoughts out a bit more. Bear with me for this wall of text, I hope some of you read through, but for those who don’t I will include a TL;DR at the end.

  1. 25% of the ranking are organization coaches – they give their personal ranking of 1-25 for teams that are competing. These rankings are all averaged out between the results to give a final ranking. The first place team in this overall ranking gets 25 points, the second place gets 24 points, etc.

  2. 25% of the ranking are from each team’s captains, following the same system as the coach votes.

  3. 25% of the ranking is final place at the end of the qualifying matches, top 25, and ranked with the same scoring as the other previous polls but dependent on how you do in your matches. The team ranked first will get 25 points, while the team ranked second will get 24 points, and so on down the list.

  4. 25% of the ranking is from results in tournament play, with captains of an alliance getting the most points and the third pick getting the least. So in the winning alliance, they get point values of 25, 24, 23 and the runner up alliance gets scores of 22, 21, and 20.

All of these categories are worth the same total point value and each make up the same part of the final score. To scale this metric for teams that haven’t had as many tournaments your cumulative score will be an average score of all of your competitions. There is no rule against voting for your own teams in the polling, but a larger amount of polling will hopefully eliminate some of this bias if it exists. The polling itself is also only 50% of the overall score, so hopefully some of the popularity contest aspect of a power ranking is removed by that and actually has the teams prove themselves.

Q1. What purpose does this serve?
A1. While it currently serves no purpose other than analysis for the entertainment of teams, I can see a localized system like this serving as information to help teams not from the area coming to compete there have an idea of the strongest teams, as well as being relevant for larger tournaments like US Nationals and potentially even worlds.

Q2. Don’t team’s robots change a lot over the year?
A2. While this is true, success in a tournament is often just as much a result of the team members than the robot. The best teams in the world are not good simply as a product of their robot, but because they are skilled drivers and programmers. This concern is also minimized by the polling being a metric of the teams themselves hopefully.

Q3. Can I have an example of how this works?
A3. Sure! Team 1234A is really excited for their first tournament, but not too many people have heard of them. They end up being ranked in 24th place by the Coach’s, and in 20th place by the team votes. This information isn’t compiled until after the event of course, so they aren’t worried at all. At the end of the qualifying matches, they are ranked in 8th place after going 4-2. The third ranked alliance selects them as their second pick. The tournament plays out, and they end up finishing as the runner up. So what score do they get? Lets look at the point values for each portion of the ranking scale. 24th place is pretty low, so they only get 2 points for that. 20th place gives them an additional 6 points. Finishing 8th is pretty good, so they get 18 points for that. Because they are the second picked team on the runner up alliance, they end up getting 21 points. Adding these all up, we get a total of 47 points.

**Q4. But Yoder, I don’t like this idea! **
A4. The only way this can improve is with your criticism, fellow roboteers.

Q5. I’m just here for the summary, give it to me please!
A5. TL;DR: Power rankings can be a fun way to analyse how good teams are on a local scale, and provide information to others in a simple manner for scouting at large tournaments.

#2

This is a great summary!

I would be up to trying it out! Would we do this by regions? I am in Indianapolis, IN, so would we just do the IN competitions?

Would we compile our info to a Wiki page?

It would be nice if someone made a template people could use to determine teams ranks.

Would we do it by SP’s and WP’s to?

#3

I think it would work best by far just doing regions, that way we get the same teams playing each other for the most part and there are no geographic difficulties with comparing different regions. Not sure if there should be a formal split for regions, but that is another can of worms.

I like the idea of a wiki page, not sure how to implement it myself though.

Template is easily doable in an excel spreadsheet that adds up the scores and then automatically ranks teams.

WPs and SPs would be considered in the portion of the ranking made up by qualifying round placement.

#4

Alright. I could make a Wiki page on the VEX Forum, or I can make a whole website just for this. It would have a .weebly.com ending, but it still works. maybe something like “vexscouting.weebly.com”?

Would someone like to make an Excel Spreadsheet for this? How would it look? What would need to be on it?

#5

Would we just do this by state (for the US), then country’s or cities for the other parts of the world?

#6

I like the website idea! This could be very helpful it should be able to tell stats on a team kind of like on a baseball player. Do you understand what I mean?

#7

I understand.

I am working on a site right now, but I cannot figure out how I should organize it.

Maybe like:
Region>USA>State>List of teams?

Something like this?

Here is the site I am working on. http://vexscouting.weebly.com/ If you would like to help create the site, send me your email. You will have to create a Weebly account first.

#8

just an idea. a picture of a map they can click there reigon and then it zooms in. again im just throwing ideas out there.

#9

I think we should have at least 1 representative from each region do their own page on the website. I’ll do Indiana.

I am making a clickable US map right now.

#10

The website looks really good, and “.weebly.com” isn’t too complicated to understand, even if one is just saying it.

#11

Uh… #lol

There is nothing on it.

If we wanted, we could by the domain for $30/year. Whatever works.

#12

Unfortunately I can’t attach excel spreadsheets, and I don’t have google docs at school, so the spreadsheet I have created will have to wait to be uploaded… Right now its slightly automated but I will hopefully be able to get it to be much more user friendly. I really like the work you’ve done so far on the website, and I would consider putting in money for a paid domain. Perhaps we can have a meetup and talk about it at nationals? Then we will also have our thoughts on how well it works in practice. Still quite a far ways away but it never hurts to plan ahead.

To expand on my thoughts on the website - I think splitting it into states will work well, because then there are no arbritary regional assignments. Its an easy way to sort without forcing people to only have the results from tournaments they have competed in in their geographic “region” even if they go to tournaments outside of that area.

I do like the current split of Region>USA>State>Team you have done so far, and I think it could easily follow that on a worldwide basis. Perhaps use country instead of region however, just to avoid mixing up the terms.

#13

Alright. Can you save your Excel as a PDF?

I could set a donation thing up using pay pal, but I don’t have one :stuck_out_tongue:

I am going to Nationals, so it would be do-able.

#14

I’ve got the Nebraska page started.

#15

There isn’t much to look at without being able to interact with the spreadsheet, so I won’t convert it to a PDF.

Paypal would probably work well and then we can get an idea of interest.

Is there a list somewhere of all the registered teams in each state?

#16

That’s what I’m looking for right now. I can’t find anything.

#17

Maybe another segment that is for the College Teams?

#18

I don’t believe there is. Probably have to go through the team lists of all the tournaments in each state.

#19

Ooh… Fun.

I am guessing the employees of the REC Foundation know. Like Mr. Rick TYler.

#20

I know right?

Probably. Whether or not they wish to tell us is another story.