ESPN
is a great website that deals with numbers of all the sports around the world.
What we can do as teachers is that we can have the students log onto this
website and choose a sport that they are most interested in. When they do so,
we can assign different questions that they need to answer depending on the
sport they have chosen. For example, if a student picks basketball, they would
have to go through all 15 games that were played. Questions that we can ask
are: make a bar graph representing the scores of each team. Use intervals.
The
reason why I chose this website is because each student can choose a sport they
mostly like. By doing so, they are interested in what they will be doing no
matter whether they understand the lesson or not. If they didn’t understand the
lesson, by having them interested in what they are doing will definitely help
with having them understand it.
I like your idea, Abdul. I find that tie-ins with big events like the World Cup and the Olympics can enliven lessons. Students are already interested and it is relatively easy to incorporate medals tables and the like in data management units. I've also used data from the FIFA international soccer rankings with interested classes and students with some success.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/men/index.html
Thanks for the post.
Hello,
DeleteThank you for the reply. You can use any data from any sport that you are mostly interested to solve data management questions.
Love that idea man! Anytime you can incorporate sports into class, you'll cater to at least half of the class' interests. I've had students use the Score App on their phone to average out the total scores of games in the NFL. That tests them on mean, median, and mode.
ReplyDeleteAnd gives me an idea of what to bet....next week....don't judge me. I'm kidding!
Baseball is probably the best sport to use when it comes to stats and incorporating it into class. They have so many percentages and stats that you can use for fractions, percents, and decimals.
Cheers man
Hello,
DeleteThanks for the reply. When we cater and ask questions related to a students interests, the students would be more involved. I remember once during my time in high school when there was a question about Michael Schumacher, I wanted to be the first one to complete the question correctly. I loved watching F1 races and he was my favourite driver.
Hi Abdul,
ReplyDeleteGreat post and idea, sports is a huge interest within most students, they may not enjoy participating in them but watching professional sports is fairly popular. You can integrate sports and numbers within the ESPN website into most stands and lessons. One thing I would watch out for is integrating sports too much because for that small percent who dislike sports a lot, you can loose their interest and care to participate in the class therefore it is important to meet the interests of the entire class. This cannot happen every time and therefore it is good to switch interests and topics throughout various lessons and days.
Thanks
Vince
Nice use of the ESPN website. Yahoo Sports also has a fantastic collection of stats. Rotowire is a great site to show your students what you can do with the research and analysis, through fantasy sports. Considering the rise in the number of fantasy sports players, we shouldn't overlook its influence.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.stats.com/industry-analysis-articles/fantasy-sports-industry-demographic/
Do you think starting an inquiry into stats with a concrete path might limit the students view of these numbers? Having students develop an understanding, at first, through an open inquiry might evolve the way stats can be used in your classroom.
S