Ohio 2016

[El Chapo]

Honestly, this whole issue to me seems to have been very fairly resolved. It is awful what a lot of you guys, meaning Mentor, has gone through, but such is life. I feel as though chalker and the entire Ohio arbitration board did their due diligence and compromised well on a penalty for something that clearly any of us who hope to compete well may have done. The speculation is pointless and calling out is even more. The decision is ruled, the case is closed, and Centerville is going to Nats. Whining and insinuating at this point, after seeing the clearly fair decision detailed for us, achieves nothing. As an outsider to the Ohio Circuit who has competed against many of you, I feel your emotion but just move on.

[chalker]

Gonna try to respond to most of the questions / comments that have been posted in the past few hours all in one post.

So if that one mentor person had not reported the mistake, mentor would have gone to nats?

To be clear, it was the Event Supervisor, who was affiliated with Mentor, that reported the mistake to me. I (and others involved) greatly respect his integrity by doing 'the right thing' despite it having a significant negative impact on his team. To follow the hypothetical as to what would have happened had he not brought it to my attention, the score sheet all coaches received (and that was publicly posted), showed Centerville in 35th place in the event. It's extremely likely that at some point Centerville would have realized that was likely an error, since they knew their vehicle score was very good. The question then becomes whether they notice it within an hour and report it to us (per the Official scoring policy). I'm extremely grateful that we aren't in a situation where we are debating whether the error was reported in a timely manner.

I'm curious as to what Centerville's reasoning was for choosing to practice in that specific hallway with the same material as the competition floor.

I don't claim to be able to speak to their exact reasoning, but based upon the conversations I had with their coach, they wanted to test/calibrate the vehicle somewhere, and since they were all on campus (like a lot of teams were), they decided to do it in the same building. As I said previously, they felt they did a good faith effort to do something within the letter of the rules in order to be best prepared for the competition. I'd like to cite a rather famous quote here: "We are too apt to judge ourselves by our intentions and other people by their acts".

In the interest of full transparency will individual event raw score spreadsheets be released?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'individual event raw score spreadsheets'? Are you talking about just the physical papers each team's data is recorded on? Or the spreadsheet that calculates the final raw score? I don't have easy access to either, but could perhaps request them from the State Director or Event Supervisor. All I have in the final raw scores. In this case the top few places (which I think is what you are interested in) are:
1st: Mentor, 19.1
2nd: Centerville, 30.9
3rd: Westlake, 34.3
4th: Hudson, 36
5th: Nordonia, 40.3
6th: Kenston, 41.2
7th: Mason, 41.6
8th: Northview, 42
9th: Bio-Med Science Academy, 47.4
I hadn't looked at these prior to just now, but I believe the Event Supervisor did during our deliberation yesterday. One comment he made was that it didn't appear that Centerville significantly benefited compared to the other top teams. Again, this is all a hypothetical analysis, but looking at those scores, Centerville would have had to be ~15cm further away from the target (assuming approximately the same runtime) on order to have dropped six places to 8th place. I'd posit that type of error wouldn't be due to the testing they did on Friday, but welcome more educated insight from actual EV competitors as to the typical magnitude of calibration errors.

They didn't think/know it violated the rules/spirit of competition is my guess. Given the same conditions and the same assumption, anyone of us would have done the same.

Relevant to my comment above about intentions versus actions.

Also can I remind everyone that Chalker is affiliated with Centerville?

For full disclosure, it's been over 20 years since I lived in Centerville or attended Centerville H.S. My parents still live there and my mom and brother do coach Magsig, a middle school in the Centerville district. It's been a long time since any of the teachers I had in H.S. were involved in the Centerville team.

Chalker played the same card in the post above:

It just so happens that the Electric Vehicle Event Supervisor is from Mentor.

Other agree that it was a bad move for Chalker to be the arbitrator in this situation simply because of the affiliation issue

I definitely wasn't trying to imply some sort of bias on the part of the EV Event Supervisor and apologize if that was how that was perceived. To the contrary, I wanted to emphasize that DESPITE his affiliation with Mentor, he was completely aboveboard and objective in every step of this process.

I also want to point out that I was one of 4 people involved in this decision (the other 3 being the other Arbitrator, the Event Supervisor, and the State Director). It wasn't MY decision, it was a unanimous group decision. Everyone involved knows my history with SO. The other Arbitrator has NO previous or current affiliation with any SO team, nor does the State Director.

The other arbitrator and I have served in this role for more than a decade. We've discussed my previous affiliation with Centerville and while it doesn't preclude me from involvement, I tend to in particular let him take the lead when interacting with Centerville. This was done in this case, in that he had the majority of the discussions directly with Centerville yesterday (many of which wasn't even in my presence).

The bottom line in my opinion is that technically ANY arbitration I'm involved with could impact Centerville indirectly, but I'm far enough removed from school and have enough experience and loyalty to SO as an organization that it's appropriate for me to help make decisions regarding them. Also note that on the rare occasion my mother is directly involved in an arbitration, I do usually recuse myself and let the other arbitrator handle it.

He brings up an important point in that the decision ought not to have been decided by a figure affiliated with any party, especially the one being reviewed.

At some point most anyone involved in SO has some sort of affiliation with the teams involved. This ranges from parents that volunteer to help out, coaches that serve as event supervisors, or former competitors like myself that help with the operations of the tournament. This also occurs at ALL levels of the competition, including Nationals. SO doesn't have enough resources to utilize purely unaffiliated people for all these roles, hence we've established procedures to minimize any impact of bias.

To re-emphasize, in this situation, while I don't think I had any bias, I was only 1 of 4 people involved in the decision. The Event Supervisor clearly had a vested, immediate interest in trying to heavily penalize Centerville to the benefit of Mentor. Yet NOBODY should even remotely consider that bias came into play in the decision (as I indicated above), which he fully supported and facilitated. I'd propose that the same should be said for myself.

Yes, he did play the same card by mentioning that the EV ES was from Mentor...and also that they were also involved in pretty much every part of the situation, including the decision to remove the 1000 point penalty in EV for a 5 point team penalty.
And who are these "others" you are mentioning? .

Again, I absolutely did not intend to cast any aspersions on the EV ES. He's a steller example of someone serving in that role with integrity and honesty, while trying to do the right thing for everyone involved.

As for the 'others' I'm sure this is referring to others associated with the Mentor team. My affiliation with Centerville was one of the first things the Mentor coach brought up in our conversation. I and the State Director immediately clarified that it was a group decision (as I've done above) and that it didn't impact it in any way.

I'm pretty sure chalker wasn't even on the arbitration committee; if you read his post, he refers to the arbitrators in the third person when he was talking about deciding the five-point penalty.

Sorry for the confusion, but I am one of 2 members on the Ohio State arbitration committee. The 3rd person references were an artifact of how I framed some of the stuff I wrote.

I don't understand how Flea is being sarcastic and condescending by making a valid point. Eventually that point will be made, so it's better that it is discussed and refuted right now. I'm pretty sure Chalker will have a logical response to all of this when he comes on.

As I said before, I know emotions are high due to a big screwup on my part with the scoring reporting. I don't have any issue whatsoever with the questions being asked here and am happy to respond as best I can, and hope they are received as I intend to convey them: with full disclosure and transparency as to the facts and activities surrounding this incident.

As an outsider to the Ohio Circuit who has competed against many of you, I feel your emotion but just move on.

There's something to be said for the cathartic effect of being able to discuss and debate this, which I encourage. As I indicated previously, I'm very upset with myself over what's occurred and can't imagine the emotions others are experiencing. I do know though that over the course of the past ~24 hours, by discussing and engaging everyone on this, it's helping me come to terms with the situation. I can only hope it ends up having a similar effect on the rest of you.

[cemsc10]

In the interest of full transparency will individual event raw score spreadsheets be released?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'individual event raw score spreadsheets'? Are you talking about just the physical papers each team's data is recorded on? Or the spreadsheet that calculates the final raw score? I don't have easy access to either, but could perhaps request them from the State Director or Event Supervisor. All I have in the final raw scores. In this case the top few places (which I think is what you are interested in) are:
1st: Mentor, 19.1
2nd: Centerville, 30.9
3rd: Westlake, 34.3
4th: Hudson, 36
5th: Nordonia, 40.3
6th: Kenston, 41.2
7th: Mason, 41.6
8th: Northview, 42
9th: Bio-Med Science Academy, 47.4
I hadn't looked at these prior to just now, but I believe the Event Supervisor did during our deliberation yesterday. One comment he made was that it didn't appear that Centerville significantly benefited compared to the other top teams. Again, this is all a hypothetical analysis, but looking at those scores, Centerville would have had to be ~15cm further away from the target (assuming approximately the same runtime) on order to have dropped six places to 8th place. I'd posit that type of error wouldn't be due to the testing they did on Friday, but welcome more educated insight from actual EV competitors as to the typical magnitude of calibration errors.

^ that was chalker, quote did not work

So you are able to see the scoresheet with the scores for each event, like what score on a test you got compared to others?[/quote]

[bbrown3979]

I hadn't looked at these prior to just now, but I believe the Event Supervisor did during our deliberation yesterday. One comment he made was that it didn't appear that Centerville significantly benefited compared to the other top teams. Again, this is all a hypothetical analysis, but looking at those scores, Centerville would have had to be ~15cm further away from the target (assuming approximately the same runtime) on order to have dropped six places to 8th place. I'd posit that type of error wouldn't be due to the testing they did on Friday, but welcome more educated insight from actual EV competitors as to the typical magnitude of calibration errors.

They didn't think/know it violated the rules/spirit of competition is my guess. Given the same conditions and the same assumption, anyone of us would have done the same.

Relevant to my comment above about intentions versus actions.

You can't really speculate to the actual impact of Centerville's advantage and use that as a basis for punishment without knowing what their practice runs were the night prior. Clearly in the rules of EV it is established what the punishment is for cheating, disqualification. There is no grey area. I know you tried citing "-Officials are encouraged to apply the least restrictive penalty for rules infractions (see examples in the Scoring Guidelines). Event supervisors must provide prompt notification of any penalty, disqualification or tier ranking." Least restrictive and most restrictive possible penalties in their situation happen to be the same according to the rules, where the penalty for cheating is explicitly stated. Giving Centerville a penalty for their actions shows those involved clearly believe that the team was looking for a loophole or other competitive advantage. Assuming they were in good faith because they asked an OSU faculty again is a stretch. These students should know to only ask someone associated with Scioly and to clarify such when inquiring. I don't know specifically about situations such as this in the past because I have not been involved in running a state competition. But in the other competitions the teams found to be cheating, whether intentional or not, have always been placed in another tier.

[gavinnupp]

Such an awesome day in Columbus yesterday. The energy and enthusiasm was great; made a few new friends as well. Too bad, the EV issue has thrown such a dark cloud on the day.

Agreed, though there were plenty of snow clouds to darken it already
My team had a great time in all our events, bringing home a gold and some bronze. Everyone I met was very friendly and helpful. The event supervisor for Green Gen wrote a fun and aggressive exam, and Invasive was a very practical test of me and my partner's knowledge. I had a blast, and look forward to rematching many of you next year!
What did y'all think of the trial events offered?

[Unome]

Such an awesome day in Columbus yesterday. The energy and enthusiasm was great; made a few new friends as well. Too bad, the EV issue has thrown such a dark cloud on the day.

Agreed, though there were plenty of snow clouds to darken it already
My team had a great time in all our events, bringing home a gold and some bronze. Everyone I met was very friendly and helpful. The event supervisor for Green Gen wrote a fun and aggressive exam, and Invasive was a very practical test of me and my partner's knowledge. I had a blast, and look forward to rematching many of you next year!
What did y'all think of the trial events offered?

I haven't looked at the trial rules, but judging by the fact that it's even there at all, I'm thinking Optics will be getting significant changes for next year.

[chalker]

So you are able to see the scoresheet with the scores for each event, like what score on a test you got compared to others?

Yes, I have the master scoresheet which shows the raw total score and ranks for all events. But I don't have all the event specific scoresheets that show the various components that contributed to that raw total score.

You can't really speculate to the actual impact of Centerville's advantage and use that as a basis for punishment without knowing what their practice runs were the night prior.

I never said we speculated and used that as a basis for the penalty. To the contrary, I explicitly stated that I hadn't even looked at those numbers until today when asked about those details. I also stated that we somewhat arbitrarily, but unanimously came up with a 5 point penalty. Given the information we had at the time, nobody can honestly state there was any objective way to determine the magnitude of the penalty.

I also want to point out that arbitrators and event supervisors FREQUENTLY speculate on actual impact and use it as a basis for penalties. The charter to apply the least restrictive penalty empowers us to do that. There was actually another completely unrelated arbitration in Electric Vehicle yesterday that clearly illustrates this. Rule 2.g. requires a 1/4" round dowel attached to the vehicle so that the photo gates can be properly triggered. 3 or 4 teams (not Centerville or Mentor) showed up with dowels out of spec. One or two had 1/4" square dowels, while the others had 5/16" round dowels (a completely understandable error since it's really hard to tell the difference without a micrometer). The Event Supervisor initially decided to issue a Construction Penalty per 5.e. However after considering the situation for a while, and completely unprompted, approached me about whether he could waive those penalties since they had ZERO material impact on the performance of the vehicles or running of the event. I told him it was well within his power to do that, as long as all teams were treated the same (e.g. held to the same standards). As a result, he did decide to waive those penalties. (Side note, this all happened mid-day, before the majority of the discussions regarding the Centerville team took place).

I could probably come up with dozens of similar anecdotes along these lines, as could many of the other Event Supervisors that frequent SO. "Erring on the side of the competitors" is a frequent mantra in SO circles.

Clearly in the rules of EV it is established what the punishment is for cheating, disqualification. There is no grey area. I know you tried citing "-Officials are encouraged to apply the least restrictive penalty for rules infractions (see examples in the Scoring Guidelines). Event supervisors must provide prompt notification of any penalty, disqualification or tier ranking." Least restrictive and most restrictive possible penalties in their situation happen to be the same according to the rules, where the penalty for cheating is explicitly stated. Giving Centerville a penalty for their actions shows those involved clearly believe that the team was looking for a loophole or other competitive advantage.

Nowhere in the EV rules is "disqualification" mentioned, let alone "cheating". It is mentioned in the General Rules though as I indicated.

I also object strongly to the insistence that "looking for a loophole or other competitive advantage" equals cheating. The vast majority of teams are looking for innovative or creative ways to be the best competitors (e.g. loopholes or competitive advantages), which is very much within the spirit of SO. By your definition, it would appear that ANYONE that gets issued a penalty would be considered a 'cheater', which is clearly not the intent of the rules since many SO events have many different types of penalties listed within the rules to account for a variety of situations that could occur during the competition.

The fundamental issue that often arises is deciding when someone pushes the boundaries of the rules too much, which is going to be a subjective perspective depending on who is looking at it. For all the reasons I previously listed, 4 independent and experienced people agreed this was a 'grey area' situation that did slightly step over the lines, and hence was justified in having a penalty issued - none of us would refer to this as an incident of 'cheating'. Likewise, we agreed that none of the penalties listed in the event rules applied to the situation, and hence we needed to rely upon the General Rules to issue a penalty.

I don't know specifically about situations such as this in the past because I have not been involved in running a state competition. But in the other competitions the teams found to be cheating, whether intentional or not, have always been placed in another tier.

As someone who has been involved for years in running dozens of Invitational, Regional, State and National competitions, I DO know a lot about situations such as this in the past. And I can assure you that unless the event rules explicitly have a section on tiering, it's extremely rare for event supervisors or arbitrators to create a tier as a penalty. Electric Vehicle does NOT have a tiering component to the event. And to reiterate, 4 people involved in situation all agreed, based upon all the available information, that appropriate response to the actions by the Centerville team was a modest team penalty, not an event specific one.

From a PM that I think everyone should be able to see my response:

The raw scores that you posted are exactly what I was referring to. In the interest of full transparency of the tournament would you mind sharing the spreadsheet with raw scores for all events? As there were questions about WIDI being made a trail event etc.

We have a general policy of not releasing all the raw scores for all events. I'm happy to speak to specific ones if you think it somehow relates to this particular situation though. Since WIDI Div C being turned into a trial event was brought up, I'll also give a brief overview of the situation.

The Event Supervisor discovered after the fact that the teams in the first session were only given 20 minutes to do their build, while the teams in the 2nd and 3rd session got 25 minutes. He did an extensive analysis of looking at the written instructions of those 1st session teams and the resulting structures and found that in at least 1 situation it appeared the team had correct instructions that they did not get to act upon due to running out of time. There is of course no way we could know what the actual impact was or how the 1st session teams would have performed given 5 more minutes. As a result, the only fair course of action was to turn the event into a trial one so that it didn't impact the overall team rankings.

I'd note though, which anyone can verify by looking at the posted scoresheets and schedule, that Centerville got 1st place in WIDI and was in that first session that had less time. Mentor came in 6th and was in the second session which got more time. Had we not trialed the event, Centerville would have increased their lead over Mentor by 5 points.

[chalker]

I haven't looked at the trial rules, but judging by the fact that it's even there at all, I'm thinking Optics will be getting significant changes for next year.

I'm curious as to why you say this. Optics was very well liked and run last time it was in 4 years ago. It's scheduled to come back next year and the rules will likely be identical to before. Just because we run it as a trial doesn't mean there's concern with it - sometimes it just because it's a cool event we want teams to be able to experience. Is there something that happened related to the event that I'm not aware of?

[Bazinga+]

I would just like to say that I'm quite disturbed at the fact that teams were videotaping Centerville testing their EV near the competition. I honestly believe that those who were taping it were acting much more out of the spirit of the competition than those running the EV. I would expect people to let the competitors know of a possible violation rather than reording it. On the subject of testing the EV, at nationals people test their vehicles the day before in the testing area almost every year (for example 2 years ago like 20 teams were testing scrambler and wheeled vehicle in the gym a day before the competition), which is definitely fair since all teams have an equal opportunity to test it there. The event Is much more luck based if teams are not allowed to do that, since different floors greatly affect the distance of faster cars, and if teams are not allowed to test on the floor the precise outcome is luck based, which ruins the event to some extent

[spongeb0b]

In past years I have frequently seen teams practice their vehicle before competition at States. As a coach for middle school scrambler this year I had instructed my students to practice on Friday at the competition site if possible. This was before I saw the posting on the state website explicitly prohibiting this. I think the fact that EV was not mentioned at all on the list further added to the confusion, i.e. made it seem like it was okay to practice on site.

I remember when EV was a middle school event years ago, it was called battery buggy back then, at one of the invitationals when impound was not required, we were practicing on site the day of the competition!

As I had mentioned in my earlier posting students should always be looking at ways to gain competitive advantage. Testing on site is one of the methods. If you have not thought about doing so you should start, unless of course told otherwise that it is illegal.

I strongly disagree with "chalkers" response that "looking for a loophole" is within the spirit of SO. If there is loophole in the rules I believe that teams should be obligated to bring it up to the event director for clarification, not exploit it. In scrambler for instance, it is stated that the egg backstop be rigid. There is no mention in the rules that the chassis of the vehicle be rigid. So a loop hole in this case would be for a rigid backstop be attached to a chasis that is flexible thus cushioning the egg if it hits the wall. This "loop hole" was in fact brought up and clarified in the FAQ.

Was centerville exploiting a loop hole when they tested on site the day before the competition? IMHO, I don't think so. It is not clearly stated anywhere that they are not allowed to do so and my guess is that Centerville has been doing on site testing in past years, at least at nationals according to what the previous poster had said teams were doing at nationals. Was Centerville cheating by testing on site? IMHO, this clearly does not constitute cheating. If they were cheating does anyone here think that they would do it during the day when most of the students were visiting the event sites? Their intend certainly wasn't to cheat, IMHO.