Building Event Efficiency

[rman]

Yeh I never understood that either. Why wouldn't they want everyone to know how the events were being scored, kinda sounds like the Bush administration.

[Flavorflav]

I've never understood it either - it seems insane. What is the harm in telling people their scores?

[physicsphan]

It makes sense why they would not tell you other teams scores depending on the building event. For Elevated Bridge it would not matter but if there was any advantage in knowing how well someone else is scoring you could use that to your advantage to try and place higher. Thus the later you go the more advantagous it could be. What if you knew for Scrambler that you were the last team to go and that every other team broken the egg. Wouldn't you play that scenerio differently then if you knew no team had broken an egg? How would that be fair to the other teams.

[andrewwski]

I agree that scores should not be released during the event, but at the end of the day I see no harm in releasing them.

[croman74]

I agree that scores should not be released during the event, but at the end of the day I see no harm in releasing them.

Yeah, cause at the end of the day you can see how close you were to the top teams and gain knowledge from that experience.

[jander14indoor]

Couple of reasons are given by the powers that be on scores.
First, they want to surprise the medal winners at the awards ceremony.
Second, there's an in depth score counseling process to catch errors after the event supervisor sometimes make, be a shame for a team to think they have a medal due to an error that's later corrected.
Third, there are some events where knowing the score can't affect the results because it is against an absolute, and some where it can.
Example, on day of, not much one can do to improve ones bridge score. Its built, you load it, it breaks you get a score. But if you know a score of 2000 is possible while you are stuck at 1500 (or vice versa, best so far is 1500 and you can do 2000 every time) you can then decide how much more time to spend on bridge vs other event prep.
Wright Stuff it can defintely be part of your strategy. Fly late in the day and if you know everyone elses times you know how hard to push your luck. Do you go for that safe no-touch flight or bang it off the rafters and hope for good bumps?

As to publishing after the fact, that's happening more and more at regional and state levels, probably not at nationals yet.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

[rman]

It makes sense why they would not tell you other teams scores depending on the building event. For Elevated Bridge it would not matter but if there was any advantage in knowing how well someone else is scoring you could use that to your advantage to try and place higher. Thus the later you go the more advantagous it could be. What if you knew for Scrambler that you were the last team to go and that every other team broken the egg. Wouldn't you play that scenerio differently then if you knew no team had broken an egg? How would that be fair to the other teams.

Just a fine point, but this year you get the same penalty for breaking the egg as you do for having the egg simply touch the barrier.

As to your main point, is there really any team that would adjust their run based on a knowledge of the other teams performance. Interestingly, the only event that I have ever seen run live scoring is Scrambler, and that event doesn't seem to have suffered in any way from it. I suppose that if there was a really uncompetitive year and you went last and knew that the best score was a 25, you could play it safe and go for 10 cm from the barrier. In a real competition it never seems to have been an issue. Everyone had to try for the best score they could possibly attain in order to get the best place possible. I think the strategy that most teams use in Scrambler is to do a safe run first (the closest that they think they can safely do without risk of hitting the barrier) then on the second run they do the absolute best that they can. In trajectory, electric vehicle, bridge, junkyard challenge, it's about time, etc. I can't see what you could do with the knowledge that someone else had gotten a certain score. You would clearly try and do the best you could because there is no risk in doing so. There might be some possible change in strategy with robo cross if you were going last and nobody had gotten a perfect score. Maybe you wouldn't take the risk of dropping a lego off the field if you knew could win by just leaving it in a certain zone, but again only the absolute last competitor could use that knowledge and the likelyhood that the last competitor is going to be so good that they could win without trying their best, is very low indeed.

[sachleen]

Don't forget to post these scores in the brand new Score Board so everyone can see what scores they need to shoot for in their events.

Read this post for a little more info on it.

[croman74]

Did you make that tehkubix? It's really nice.
EDIT/ Just looked under announcements and you did make it. Thanks for making that, it's really going to help a bunch of people.

[i brk a lot of eggs]

I'm not against the publishing of scores at the end of competitions. As a matter of fact, I'd like it.

I don't mind sharing my scores at all once I've competed. But until then, I won't.

All our scores get posted and given to teams at invitationals.