Look who is mentioned in Scouting Magazine...

[Vitamin K]

http://scoutingmagazine.org/2014/12/sch ... ood-derby/

Granted, they could have gone into a lot more detail than they did, but hey...might convince somebody out there to ditch double-elimination, eh?

[Stan Pope]

Mark said up front that he had a space limit that looked to me like "impossible". I did my best to give him the most important pieces. It was up to him to organize and prioritize.

[sporty]

The headline is a odd catch.
wonder why they went with that ?

Race formats that can keep the scouts more involved..

I'm glad stan got to get the word out.

I so dislike double elim. Or our countil single elim. But I under stand with 2500 kids. compromise is a must, sometimes.

But I loved how p_ town runs there race.
kids run 3 times each. In each lane. 9 runs.
however. The winners is the fastest times out of there 9 runs. Often the kids don't always know who is actually winning. Often they stay excited and into the race. And wait to hear who won. Ect .

Randy's really got great software.

Also, 50-60 kids that race format, takes about 1 hour and 10 minutes.

[whodathunkit]

Donadaliheligv .. to you Stan Pope!
That's Cherokee language for Congratulations.

[Stan Pope]

Thanks, guys.

FWIW, I included "GPRM" and "DerbyTalk" but I don't recall mentioning my web site. He apparently picked that up before contacting me. Oh, well ...


BTW, new project starting up here ... I've got 10 GPU's installed in my LAN. With 640 little computers in each one, that is 6400 PC's, each about 14 times faster than the PC that PPN charts were found with. That is about 90,000 times as much computing power! Moore's Law at its best! So, I have started programming an expanded search for better (and deeper) PPN charts! I'll lose some of that advantage because I am adding some side conditions that I think will produce better charts without having to do the post-generation sorting. It will not be a short project ... I expect months of searching even with the increased horsepower. I hope it all goes according to plan.

[Speedster]

With Stan Pope at the Helm, it will come out PERFECT !!!

[ngyoung]

Would have been nice if the writer devoted more lines to describing Stan's solution instead of just detailing the problem. Yes someone can go and search for his site to figure it out if they are motivated. In my opinion that makes for a poor article when you have to look elsewhere to get even basic information on what the article was supposed to disclose.

It is nice to see Stan get the exposure though. The DE style derbys are no fun for the scouts.

[gpraceman]

Double-elimination tournaments can go quickly. For example, if you had 24 cars and a three-lane track, you would need to run only 26 or 27 heats. (The actual number depends on the outcome of the first heat between the top car in the winners bracket and the top car in the losers bracket.) Other methods can take longer, although not necessarily significantly so.

I don't really like that statement. Taking longer is really dependent on what scheduling method is being used. Most find that you can run a LR or PPN schedule faster than DE, given the same number of cars.