FSAE + Innovation = Dead?

[murpia]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by dhaidinger:
A quick $.02 on how to deal with a design judge who criticizes your design. Show them test data regarding the decision you made! Every decision is a compromise. You will almost always get one judge who agrees with your theory and one who doesn't. The only way to please them both is to show them data that supports your decision. Many judges will even give you a significant amount of credit if you show them data that says your decision was in fact wrong, provided you have a good founded theory as to why you made the decision in the 1st place. (They will of course expect you to make the appropriate redesign next year)

If the judge still doesn't like your idea, they may start to question your data (uncertainty, calibration, statistical significance, constants/variables, etc). If you are prepared to answer these questions, you should be able to convince even the toughest of judges that you are at least "not wrong". </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

This statement should be required reading for all FSAE competitors! Donavan has it spot on. If you follow the above advice I would add that you have full grounds for invoking the judging moderation process should you still be dis-satisfied with your score.

Ian Murphy
Formula Student Design Judge

[Dick Golembiewski]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Storbeck:
"incorrect. if you have seen a score sheet you would know that few of the points are actually awarded for innovation."

What I meant was that they got all of the points available for inovation.

I'm looking at a score sheat that says you can get up to 15 points out of 150 for inovation. Western Austrailia got all 150 points in design at FSAE 04, FSAE 05, and FSAEAUS 05. I'm assuming in order to get a perfect 150 score you would need to get all 15 "innovation" points. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is incorrect. While some design groups tally points, what happens in the first round at FSAE is that those totals are used to rank the entries into one of five (as I recall) groups. The top group advances to the semi-finals, while the others in each group all get the same number of points.

This is the only way to keep things equitable given the number of entries, and the fact that there are up to 10 different groups of design judges. There are hard graders and easy graders, and using this system (Which we initiated back in 2000 or 2001 - I recall writing up the points breakdown while Carroll was announcing it at the judges' briefing) ensures that no one receives an advantage or penalty from being in a given design group. It also helps us avoid the inevitable complaints of "so-and-so received 6.5 points for innovation while we only received 6.0. Our car is much more innovative, and we think we should get 7.0! We can't break things down that finely. All we can really do is rank everyone based on our overall impressions - one of which is innovation.

In the semi-finals, the cars are again ranked by each judge attending. The cars are then broken down into groups, with the top group advancing to the design finals. (Semi-finalists all receive more points than those that didn't advance.)

In the finals, the winner receives the maximum number of points. We assign points to the remaining cars based upon our impressions. (Again, finalists receive more points than those that didn't advance.)

So while it appears as if the winner received all 15 points for innovation, that isn't necessarly so. We don't get that picky about points.

[Storbeck]

Well I guess I stand corrected.

Thanks for explaining that.

Andy

[Charlie]

The scores are normalized so the winner will always get 150 points in design. So it does not mean they got all available points.

Mr. Golembiewski is correct about the US FSAE event scoring (at least as far as I can recall), but at FSAE-A, there are not 'tiers.' Each car has it's own score.

[Z]

Pat, Dick, Charlie, any other judges/officials,

I made the comment on the FSAE-AUS thread that many cars that did well outright got very low Design scores - eg. UQld 2nd outright, 14th in Design (out of 24 cars).

Any explanation for this?

Z

[Denny Trimble]

Way back in '99, my team placed 47th in design (out of about 90 entrants), 2nd in endurance, and 5th overall.

We completely blew the design presentation. The car doesn't sell itself, or tell the judges how much its creators know. The answers a team gives when probed count as much for design points as the car they built, in my opinion.

[B.K.]

I know that story, Denny.

Not quite so far back, in 2001, Cornell was fifth in accelleration, first in skidpad, first in autocross, first in endurance. First overall. Didn't make final design.

Same deal: expected the car, and maybe our name, to sell itself. Didn't work. I think it was less an issue of not knowing the answers than not stepping up and pointing out the innovative things on the car (innovation on a Cornell car?!). The judges aren't necessarily going to ask the questions you want them to ask... you gotta make sure they see why your design is the best.

[Denny Trimble]

Yeah, I thought about it more after I posted, and it was mainly a lack of presentation skill and preparation on our part.

I've also seen teams do very well in Design one year, then the next year the team builds a very similar car, and gets nailed in design because nobody on the new team really knows why they did what they did.

[FFDave]

Thanks steve and Michael for your comments but you have completely missed the point of the post. It was not meant to be taken as a chance to have a go at the officials or volunteers, and i in no way have a lack of respect towards them and im certain that is the case for the team too. It was meant to be a debate discussing different approaches to designing a car (do you learn much from slightly optimizing last years design or is a clean slate and an ambitious project worthwhile attempting as this is meant to be a learning environment). Some of the people (magicweed, Z, Mechanimal) who posted replies got the idea and made some good points but clearly you thought I was attacking you which is not the case. Your right, the UOA car was not ready for scrutineering and i never claimed that the amount of time to get through scrutineering was longer than it needed to be. Nor am i claiming you arent allowed to express your opinions based on your experience but there is a time and a place for everything and tech simply was not the time. I dont want to get in debate about what happened as it is water under the bridge. Please lets move on and discuss what this post is actually about?.

[Charlie]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by FFDave:
Why is it that when a team of students build a car that is against the so called "norms"� and is slightly outside the box, why is it that they are criticized by not only the scrutineers, the judges but also advisors.

What I am referring to is the reception a team received at the recent Australasian Formula SAE event in Melbourne. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Dave, whether you meant it to be or not, your post was not a hypothetical 'what is the direction of FSAE,' but a direct questioning of why a particular car was recieved a certain way.

My answer is you are mistaken in how this car was recieved, and incorrect in your assumption that FSAE is dead to innovation. Especially when it comes to judging. Judges WANT innovation. They are bored with the same old thing. However it simply must be proven to be useful innovation.