Students interpret the graph relating draft pick number and contract value. They consider how much being selected earlier or later, either by a few picks or rounds effects a player’s earnings and if players should really be concerned with where in the order they are selected.
Category: Sports
Greatest March Madness program
Gonzaga just won the finals of this year’s March Madness tournament. Still, which NCAA teams have had the best basketball programs over the years. Students decide which stats count towards the “Greatest March Madness Program”. Once students decide their “best program ever,” challenge them use a different criteria than they originally used.
Does seeding really matter?
Engage your students in percents as they get excited about March Madness. Is getting a higher seed really an advantage? Use 30 years of data to help determine for which seeds it makes sense to pick an upset. Finally, students determine a general strategy for picking games in the first round.
The Perfect Bracket
What are your chances of picking every game? How does the change from 64 to 65 to now, 68 teams in the field complicate things? How many brackets would you need to fill out to pick every possibility? How many reams of paper would you need to print all of those brackets? Let’s do the math! Also, check out the video below that explores your odds of picking all games in the tournament perfectly.
The Iditarod race will be different this year
We have two Iditarod activities for you and your classes to choose from. Appreciate the “Greatest Race on Earth”!
John Urschel, retired Baltimore Raven and Black mathematician
In this activity, students can learn about this mathematician and retired pro football player as they read to create a timeline of his life and accomplishments. They compare his milestone to the milestones that are usually met in schools.
9 Super Bowl activities
As the Super Bowl approaches, engage your students with any or many of our football activities.
Typical Super Bowl scores
Just updated! In this activity students study historical Super Bowl data to reflect on average (mean, median, and mode), losing scores, winning scores, and range of scores. They are asked to judge which of these central measurements seem the most meaningful and…
Super Bowl Numerals
Introduce Roman numerals to your class. In this activity students learn the rules for evaluating Roman numerals, decipher copyright dates, see how Roman numerals are used today, and do some strange looking arithmetic and surprisingly easy computation.
Crazy basketball score
Wow! Look at that score! There were some scoreboard malfunctions in this December 15, 2020, pre-season game. What might have been the final score if this game progressed at this rate? The activity: Celtics&76ers.pdf
Winter Holidays – 18 activities
Do I have enough wrapping paper? – Students estimate the size of a gift and decide if the given wrapping paper is going to be enough. Finally they try to create a rule for determining enough wrapping paper from the dimensions of…
Thanksgiving, Black Friday, football and giving (12 activities)
How should I cook my turkey? – Students judge timing, cost, tastiness, and quantity necessary as they plan for the feast. 4.MD.1, 5.NBT.7, 4.MD2, 6.RP.3, 6.NS.3, 7.NS.3 Great video on a deep frying fire with William Shatner. Lots of Cranberries – (new) In this…
2 Hiking Activities
Appalachian Trail Needs – Calculating the needs and rates involved in enduring this 2,168 mile trek.
Steepness and Fall Hiking – Use a little mathematics about percent grade change in hiking.
NBA Finals 2020
Exploring NBA championship data. Check out the dominance of a select few teams in NBA history. Students work the data, data representations and statistics. For which kind of observations are circle graphs or bar graphs most useful? Finally, who has won the most NBA titles NBA history?
Do you want to be an NBA virtual fan?
For health concerns, professional sports now have no actual live fans. To help generate the excitement and semblance of fans, some teams use cardboard cutouts of people. Some use Zoom screens of fans. The NBA creates virtual fans. Actual viewers…