Scheduling Methods for Large Groups - The results

[PWTom]

Thought I should post the results of our Derby since this forum gave me so many good ideas. We previously used a Stearns Method with typically either 72 or 84 cars. Last year, we raced 20 rounds with 14 heats per round. I wasn't convinced that the results really matched the quality of the cars, so came looking for alternatives.

To leverage off what we knew how to do, but still improve the accuracy of the awards, I combined the Stearns and CPN methods. We had 64 cars enter this year. so I used 20 rounds of a 72 car Stearns to determine the top 6 cars in the Pack. We then used a CPN 6-6(12) to rank the top 6.

The finals were extremely exciting with very little distance separating the first place car and the sixth place car in each of the heats. The top 4 cars were so close that lane variations and other variables kept things in doubt right until the last heat! The car that was tied for third at the end of the Stearns ended up winning! As an aside, my son, a Bear, finished second

Next year, I hope to introduce rank racing using the PPn/CPN charts with the fastest cars in each rank moving to a finals to determine the Pack's fastest cars.

Thanks for all of the great ideas, information and support from the forum members.

[Stan Pope]

Congratulations to your son. Outstanding results!

I'll be interested if your analysis of the record shows the reason that the finals winner came out of the preliminaries in third place. Differences in lane assignments? Difference in opponent mix? It should be an interesting study.

Or were there anomalies (inconsistent results) observed in the finals?

Were some cars "dying", i.e., running down their luberication curve?

etc.

If you have the heat and lane assignments and results in machine readable, I'd love to look at them!

[MathGuy]

Congrats on a sucessful derby.
Means you know the satisfaction of coming in 2nd. (And your boy does too!)

If you have results, How many different boys of the 64 came in 1st at least once? I am assuming a 6 lane track. Given a larger group, I would guess maybe 20 +/- a few boys had.

[MathGuy]

Your thoughs on next year is exactly where you should take it. (IMO)

We race by rank, and it has advantages in several regards.
1. Race Time / Registration Time per family is shorter. Assuming they get there 45 minutes before the beginning of rank race, the family doesn't have to be there for more than 2 hours.
2. Tigers race Tigers, ETC.
3. Because the crowd is split up, it is more managable.
4. Less boys, means more winners, thus happier kids.
5. We don't need a separate registration or weigh in day.
6. We don't have a pack champion race, because that would mean bringing back the morning champs to race. One could, but one would have to be willing to race without the kids. (The families winners of the early ranks, might have something planned in the afternoon.)

We have the races on saturday, start early, 8:30 registration for 2nd year webelos and end in the 4:00 afternoon with the tigers. We have official weigh starting 45 minutes before each race, and we start wtih the Weblos early, because they have the least amount of trouble, starting with the tigers and wolves early can be chaotic, because of the many first timers. (We have fine tooling stations if needed) The unofficial "self weigh" can be done Friday night (while the track is being set up), and younger ranks are encourage to get there early on Saturday to fine tune there cars. There will always be families that will still get there 5 minutes before the race with there cars weighing 4.3 or 5.5 ounces, but if you have a pit table ready for it, they can help get there car in up to specs.

[PWTom]

Mathguy, I just did some cursory stats on winners.

#
of
Wins Boys %
1 36 56
2 30 47
3 24 38
4 23 36
5 22 34
6 17 27
7 14 22
8 12 19
9 10 16
10 10 16
11 9 14
12 7 11
13 6 9
14 6 9
15 5 8
16 4 6
17 2 3
18 2 3
19 1 2

So just over half of the boys had at least one win in their cap.

Stan, I have the heat results for the Stearns portion of the race in a large Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet and the finals are in an Excel spreadsheet. If these formats work for you, I'll be glad to forward them along. I would be interested in any insights you can glean from the results.

Based on my review of the results from the finals, the sixth p[lace car was clearly the slowest with the fifth place car a bit better. After that, the top four cars were all extremely close such that small variables such as how the starter placed the cars on the track to jow he dropped the gate could all have made the difference. However, I would quite interested to hear others thoughts on the possibilities.

[Stan Pope]

Stan, I have the heat results for the Stearns portion of the race in a large Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet and the finals are in an Excel spreadsheet. If these formats work for you, I'll be glad to forward them along. I would be interested in any insights you can glean from the results.

However, I would quite interested to hear others thoughts on the possibilities.

I'd love to see 'em. I think that I can import the files. Worth a try, anyway.

Of course I'll share whatever I learn back to you!

Email to address in my profile, please.