11.3 District Championships with Multiple Divisions
If a District Championship has too many teams to allow all teams 12 Qualification MATCHES, then the event hosts multiple divisions. These events have 2 or 4 divisions (based on the number of teams participating, see Table 11‑5) with approximately 40–60 teams in each division. Teams are assigned divisions by FIRST using a process developed by FIRST in Michigan and balances need for accessible seating between Divisions.
The process employs a “brute force iterative randomizer” and is executed as follows:
1. The district team list is sorted in order of cumulative district points earned as described in section 11.1 District Events.
2. The list is divided into quartiles based on rank (e.g. the first quartile has the top 25% ranked teams). If the total number of teams is not evenly divisible by 4 times the number of divisions, additional teams are distributed to quartiles 4, then 2, then 3.
3. Division assignments are randomly generated using equal contributions from each quartile.
4. 3 criteria are calculated for each division:
a. average strength: the arithmetic mean of the district point values of teams in a division
b. distribution of strength: the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of the district point values of teams in a division. SNR is calculated as follows:
=
arithmetic mean of the district points in a division
σ = standard deviation of the district points in a division
c. distribution of strength for “top” teams: The SNR of the district point values of teams in the first quartile of a division
5. The 3 criteria for each division are compared to the other division(s). If the difference between the division’s value and any other division’s value exceeds the limits in Table 11‑6, the criteria is not met.
Table 11‑6 District Championship division evaluation limits
|
|
2 divisions |
4 divisions |
|
Average strength |
1 |
2 |
|
Distribution of strength |
1 |
2.5 |
|
Distribution of strength for “top” teams |
1.5 |
2 |
6. If all 3 criteria met, event organizers publish the assignments. If any of the 3 criteria are not met, assignments are rejected, and the process returns to Step 3.