The World Cup Finals is only played every 4 years but isn’t it always in June? The World Cup Finals 2022 will be played in Qatar from November 21 until December 18m 2022. Why is that?
Why isn’t the World Cup happening now?
Category: Sports
NBA Finals 2022
A little sports history and data analysis through the context of NBA Finals math! In this activity students consider scatter plots, circle graphs, bar graphs, Venn Diagrams and the concept of mean.
The odds of horse race betting
Rich Strike surprised everyone at the Kentucky Derby horse race in early May by moving from 18th place at the half-way mark (out of 20 horses) to winning the race. Churchill Downs, the track in Kentucky where the race took place, paid out $81 for every dollar that was bet for Rich Strike to win. How do they figure that?
Shooting for Three
The NBA court has a 3-point line that separates how many points a player will earn for his team by making a basket from outside of that line. Teams have been shooting more and more three’s, but should they be and why?
April 15th happenings
We have 6 April 15th activities. The Boston Marathon, Where your tax money goes, Jackie Robinson, and Paul Revere’s ride.
Who has the greatest Men’s March Madness program?
The Kansas Jayhawks just won the finals of this year’s March Madness tournament. Which NCAA teams have had the best basketball programs over the years. Students decide which stats count towards the “Greatest March Madness Program”.
Spring is here (5 activities)
To celebrate spring, we’ve shown our fractal tree coming to leaf and created in Python to see what students can figure out about the instructions of the computer language. More March Madness activities are included. An Excel activity on counting backwards to figure out planting dates. And, a reminder of tick time and the growth of Lyme disease.
Picking the perfect bracket 2022
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.
Iditarod 2022 – The Last Great Race on Earth
Students do some rate, distance, and hardship comparisons to decide if they agree that the Iditarod is really the Last Great Race on Earth.
Winter Olympic Activities (7 activities)
Curling – Friction, score-keeping, trajectory and weirdness are the main concepts in this activity. Curling is not a well-understood sport but the science and strategy are easily understood and enjoyed. Big Air Snowboarding – Some of your students may be officianados…
10 Super Bowl activities
Typical Super Bowl scores – Just updated for 2022 Students reflect on the mean, median, and mode losing scores, winning scores, and range of scores from past Super Bowls as they try to predict this year’s scores. They decide how the…
The LUGE
This is one of the fastest Olympic sports. Lugers, on tiny sleds, zoom down a solid ice track at fantastic speeds, hold their bodies in an aerodynamically optimized position while fighting extreme G-force, and use only a helmet as their…
Olympic Schedule
The Winter Olympics begins this week in Beijing.
Wikipedia had this schedule of events. We think that there is a lot of information missing and apparent in this graphic. What can you tell and what would you like to know?
Cold NFL games
There have been some pretty cold football games. How do you suppose the frigid temperatures affect the success or failure of the teams that are involved? Do teams from colder areas usually beat warmer based teams in cold playoffs?
Lighting the 2022 Olympic Torch
This activity introduces students to the power of a parabolic mirror in focusing the Sun’s rays to a single, hot, point … the focus of the parabola.