1500 scout council pinewood derby

Debates and discussions on the various race scheduling methods that can be used and their fairness and accuracy in determining the winners.
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MathGuy
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1500 scout council pinewood derby

Post by MathGuy »

Our council races were this weekend, we have 150 packs in our council, and both the rank winners and the runner ups of each rank were invited.

The winners and runner ups of each rank race in separate groups, thus you could come in 2nd in your pack and win the runner up division of the council race. Thus there were 10 groups total.

Resources: There were 10 tracks total, grouped in pairs for each of the ranks. Thus the winner group for Tigers all used the same track, and the Tiger runner up track was next to it, another area had the wolves, and so on.

The way the races were ran with 3 sessions , Saturday Morning, Saturday Afternoon, and Sunday Afternoon. Finals round are for the winner of each of the sessions and are done on Sunday Afternoon after the last session.

The racing was a single elimination bracket for each sessions. There were 54 racers in each bracket/session. For each group the boys raced three times rotating lanes, and the winner of 2 of the 3 races moved on.

First Round 54 total racers, 18 groups of 3.
Second Round 18 total, 6 groups of 3
Third Round 6 total, 2 Groups of 3
Fourth Round 1 Group of 2.

They actually raced 1/2 of the brackets at a time, so they didn't have to ask people to wait around. They schedule for each group of 3 to race every 10 minutes, thus there was allot of waiting around. (It wasn't that bad, because the winners and runner's up tracks were next to each other so there was really 6 races running every 10 minutes.)

Each rank was ran with only 8 workers. The check-in time was 15 minutes before each your schedule races. For your first race you would be given the exact time (ie 3:30 PM).

I will post more details and thoughts.
Last edited by MathGuy on Sun Apr 18, 2004 1:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 1500 scout council pinewood derby

Post by Stan Pope »

Interesting ... up to 150 scouts per track. Keep the details coming!

And, from those up to 150 scouts, they select one trophy winner! (Or do they try to elicit more than one trophy winner from their single elimination process?)

It is admittedly unlikely, but suppose that a group of three boys split the three heats three ways. What do they do? (If no 3-way split, then one of the boys won at leaat two heats, so that would be okay.) What do they do for a tie?

For the 3-car heats, do they randomly assign cars to the initial positions? There is potential for abuse if they assign "arbitrarily" rather than "randomly.")
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Re: 1500 scout council pinewood derby

Post by MathGuy »

I had strong appreciation for the large organization effort that was involved. Each participant was given a specific time to race, and if you won, you would have to wait around at most 40 minutes until the next race. The bracket system and single elimination was primative, but given the number of volunteers to run 10 different tracks, I would think that it needs to be simple so that amatuer volunteers could help run the races. Thus at the expense of having a very schedule time, the races were spread out, definitely not bam bam bam.

Another advantage by having kids reporting at staggered times, it allowed us the check in process not to be overrun by checking in all the boys at the same time. Check in was ran by two people who handled both the winners and the runner up races check in.

To focus on the better scheduling system, we probably need to focus on a single rank of 150 kids, with a single track of 3 lanes.

Given the suggestion that you "tweek" the current system, I would likely suggest the following changes. I will assume the racers will be split into three sessions so that they can handle the large size of the council, I will focus on how to run a bracket system with some modifications.

The 3 lane rotation system for single elimination means that a kid could travel over an hour just to get eliminated after racing three cars. :( The system would have trouble if any of the 10 tracks had a lane bias and the racers were close. This is an accuracy problem.

I would suggest combinations of cpn7 or SP4-3 races pairs.

If first rounds you had 7 groups of CPN7 races, and then race the winners of that in a finals CPN7, then you would have 49 racers.

If you had first round of 8 groups of CPN7 and two final sections of SP4-3 (4 racers) and then a final race off of the two SP4-3 winners.

Many options, but we can have kids race more, and have even lane assignments.
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Re: 1500 scout council pinewood derby

Post by MathGuy »

I will state the current method a different way, each session at each station currently has brackets that can handle 54 boys, there are 3 sessions with the winners of each session race in the council finals. 1st,2nd and 3rd place trophies and runner up ribbons for each sessions runner up.

Current Race Schedule 54

Round1
54 racers in 18 pods of 3, winners of each pod advance.
Each Racer races 3 times/3 lane rotation/54 races total.
Round2
18 racers in 6 pods of 3, winners of each pod advance.
Each Racer races 3 times/3 lane rotation/18 races total
Round3
6 racers in 2 pods of 3, winners of each pod advance.
Each Racer races 3 times/3 lane rotation/6 races total
Round4
2 racers in 1 pod of 2, winner advances to COUNCIL FINALS
Each Racer races 3 times/3 lane rotation/3 races total
Total Rounds
54 racers race a total of 81 races, only heat ties are reran.
27 pods of 3 racers except finals.
Total Schedule time is 4 1/2 hours
Each pod is schedule every 10 minutes, thus 1 race every 3.33 minutes.

Alternative ONE-49
First Round
49 racers in 7 pods of 7, winners of each pod advance
Each racer races 6 times/CPN-7/ 14 races each pod 98 total races
Second Round
7 racers in 1 pod of 7, winner of advance to Council Finals
Each racer races 6 times/CPN-7/14 races total
Total Rounds
49 racers race a total of 112 races, posible point ties need runoff races.
8 pods of 7 racers.
Each pod is schedule every 30 minutes, thus 1 race every 2.14 minutes.
Total Schedule time is 4 hours

Alternative TWO-56
First Round
56 racers in 14 pods of 4, winners of each pod advance
Each racer races 6 times/CPN-4/ 8 races each pod 112 total races
Second Round
7 racers in 2 pod of 7, winner of advances
Each racer races 6 times/CPN-7/14 races each pod, 28 total races
Round 3
2 racers in 1 pod of 2, winner advances to COUNCIL FINALS
Race off format, alternate two lanes, first to win consective races advance to Council Finals. (2+ races)
Total Rounds
56 racers race a total of 142+ races, posible point ties need runoff races.
1st Round Pods Scheduled every 15 minutes, 1 race ever 1.88 minutes
2nd Round Pods Scheduled for 30 minutes, 1 race every 2.14 minutes
Finals Round schedule for 5 minutes.
Total Time 4 hours and 35 minutes.

An simplier alternative to the current format is to race 6 times in each pod rather than 3. Also, Alternate #2, rather than using the 8 race format for the CPN-4, use the 4 race SPN-4, that is noted in other posts.

Again, the consideration for this "amatuar" help, at each of the 10 stations, thus if you have an overly complicated set up, one of the stations might screw it up.
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Re: 1500 scout council pinewood derby

Post by Stan Pope »

Rob,

I think that these will work, but each (I think) retains the single elimination flavor of the original. That means that the desire to award three place trophies accurately is stymied. In fact, it may be exacerbated somewhat, since the probability of the 2nd and/or 3rd fastest cars being matched early with the fastest is (I think) higher.

Look for a way around the single-elimination format. For instance, the early rounds could be viewed as screening, with more than the minimum number of racers advanced. In this approach, you can (approximately) retain the original 1/3 reduction factor by advancing 2 racers from each pod of 7. (The probability of having all three of the three fastest cars in the same initial pod is pretty small!) In fact, you might loosen it a bit more... allowing advancement of the top 2 racers and, possibly, more if there is a points tie for second. Admittedly, now we would have to deal with odd numbers of cars... but set that aside for the moment while we examine the accuracy aspects.
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Re: 1500 scout council pinewood derby

Post by Stan Pope »

MathGuy wrote:1st,2nd and 3rd place trophies and runner up ribbons for each sessions runner up.
2nd and 3rd place trophies from a single elimination competition are silly! The probability of the 2nd fastest car getting the 2nd place trophy is approximately 0.5 ... half the time, the wrong person gets it! And that is true only if the lanes are "dead even." 3rd place is even worse: only about 0.25 ... 3/4 of the time the wrong person gets it! (Check my probabilities, Rob ... I'm doing this in my head ... maybe results slightly different if some of the competition is best of 3 instead of best of 2!)
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Re: 1500 scout council pinewood derby

Post by MathGuy »

1st,2nd and 3rd place trophies and runner up ribbons for each sessions runner up.
Was mistated.

There is a council 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place trophy currently. The runner up of each session get's a ribbon.

I understand your thoughts about the evils of Single Elimination, but I have a hard time thinking that a method that did not include brackets would be able to be administered for such a large group of people. Especially given the inertia of the current format.

The only way you could assure accuracy of the top 3 is to send the top 3 from each of the 3 sessions to the finals.

The "help" is the problem, you have 5 physical locations with 3 sessions, thus you have 15 groups of helpers. I would characterize the help by being people that have either done it for several years, or day of helpers from our the local Jaycees. Given that "tweeks" are easier to implement then wholesale changes, I would only likely want to suggest tweeks.
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Re: 1500 scout council pinewood derby

Post by MathGuy »

If I was starting from scratch, well..... We can discuss that too. That would be an interesting discussion also.

Our council is made up of 5 districts, and 150 packs. I am not sure of the break down, but it might be 50 packs in our pack, and an average of 25 packs in the other districts. (I don't know if its 25-25-25-25- or 40-30-20-10).
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Re: 1500 scout council pinewood derby

Post by Stan Pope »

A fundamental question ... Since participation in such events is entirely voluntary, you can detect systemic problems by watching participation counts over the years. If participation counts stay high, you might reasonably conclude that "it ain't broke." Are counts holding?

Now back to "fixing it" ... I personally like the approach of "pods of 7, advance 2" vs "pods of 3 advance 1". The obvious advantages are that each racer gets three times as many opponents with the same number of heats AND the effects of bad luck in pairings gets reduced. I'd go PN7 instead of CPN 7 unless I had scads of time.
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