MovieChat Forums > Spare Parts (2015) Discussion > Misleading: They actually placed 3rd beh...

Misleading: They actually placed 3rd behind MIT in the actual challenge

posted 10 years ago by The_Real_Review
62 replies | jump to latest

Based on how this was hyped, it now appears incredibly controversial as to why the Carl Hayden High School won this competition. In the actual underwater challenge they finished 3rd behind MIT which completed the most challenges. So in effect MIT still had the best robot but since the competition also factored in their engineering interview and a review of each group's technical manual they somehow won the entire competition. I am incredibly suspicious that MIT did a worse job in the engineering interview or with their technical manual. Not buying this since at the end of the day the robot that can complete the most challenges should be the winning robot. Sorry but it seems like it was handed to them.

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html?pg=4

Further evidence this is misleading BS. If the Carl Hayden Team was really full of engineering geniuses they would be employed as such.

Carl Hayden Team (Luis Aranda, Lorenzo Santillan, Cristian Arcega, Oscar Vazquez)

Where are these engineering geniuses now?

Luis Aranda - Janitor
Lorenzo Santillan - Line Cook
Cristian Arcega - Worked at Home Depot
Oscar Vazquez - Railroad Foreman

MIT Team (Kurt Stiehl, Lauren Cooney, Jordan Stanway, Thaddeus Stefanov-Wagner)

Kurt Stiehl - Product Design Manager at Apple Inc.
Lauren Cooney - Embedded Software Engineer at Teledyne Webb Research
Jordan Stanway - Postdoctoral Fellow at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Thaddeus Stefanov-Wagner - Mechanical Engineer at Bluefin Robotics

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] MelanieJean1031 9 years ago

Real review how about get a real life?!

[–] WatchCat 9 years ago

I watched both this and the documentary, "Underwater Dreams."

I don't recall now which one included it but there were two points made that I did find important concerning the final outcome.

1st - It was noted that MIT lost points (plural) because they used (their so very well-known) "MIT" initials instead of spelling out "Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

-> Heck, if having the entire name of the school spelled out was such a big deal, why wasn't the school's full name used on the 'leader board?'

-> MIT lost by LESS than 2 overall points

-->> Something seemed amiss to me at that point.

2nd - One of the judges said that the presentation values were "subjective."

-> Doesn't that mean the outcome could have been very, very different had there been different judges?

-->> Hm-m ... something really did seem quite possibly amiss in the final scoring to me.

Given that this was the High School's 1st attempt, would their victory have really been so terribly diminished if they'd come in 3rd, as they, themselves, had hoped for?

[–] The_Real_Review 9 years ago

Excellent observations.

[–] Seth_Rogue_One 8 years ago

Hollywood always changes stuff around, I think they could have had a triumphant ending as third placers as well... Considering what they had to work with and background etc it's still very much a triumphant underdog tale.

Seth Rogue One: A Star Weed Story http://i.imgur.com/DvGLO38.jpg

[–] Doc80 8 years ago

Why would the movie say they finished third when they finished in first? The OP is a hateful little man who doesn't understand how the competition works.

[–] mariomonsieur (281) 2 months ago

The judges determined the lone high school in that group competed amidst special circumstances (they win special recognition). I would be skeptical with them winning everything were it not for the project transparency and Carl Hayden capturing the fluid without hitch. No other teams in the movie were able to complete the hardest obstacle. At first it felt geared in their favor. But really we have no way of knowing from the judging.