This week's newsletter has been translated into Spanish by Ed Campos, Jr. Make sure you check it out and tell him thank you on Twitter. The link to share is bit.ly/TTMspanish42
Based solely on the career statistics lines that you see above, would you rather have Player 1 or Player 2 on your team? I intentionally took off the names so you could only rely on statistics. Which ones are the most important to you when looking to build a team? Player 1 only had 137 home runs and 734 runs batted in, yet he had a .409 on base percentage. On top of that, he had almost half the at bats as Player 2, leading us to believe that he played for about half as many seasons. Meanwhile, Player 2 only stole 50 bases and had a much lower batting average, yet he hit far more home runs and had substantially more runs batted in. For more context, and in honor of this being the 42nd newsletter, Player 1 is the stat line of Jackie Robinson, the man famous for breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier. Not only did he put up this impressive career line of stats, he did so while breaking into the league when African American athletes were not welcomed--or allowed--on the same field as their white counterparts. He was the Rookie of the Year during his rookie season and also earned an MVP award. His number, 42, is the only number to be retired across all of baseball. Player 2 is the stat line of Ernie Banks, a Hall of Fame player who spent 19 seasons with the Chicago Cubs. Banks came into the league just a few seasons after Robinson and endured many of the same issues. While he took second place in the Rookie of the Year voting, he did manage to earn two MVPs for this performances. Now that you have this information, does it change your decision? Which player do you go with and what is your mathematical justification? Maybe you and your child(ren) aren't into baseball, and that's just fine. Here are some other sports that might interest you at the table: WNBA basketball NBA basketball NHL hockey NFL football Premier League soccer NASCAR racing Right now is a great time to be a fan of sports, with finals here and seasons in full swing. If you sit down to enjoy the game, turn it into a learning opportunity as well!
2 Comments
Danielle
7/18/2017 02:30:38 am
Love this! Any way you could make the problem more accessible by including a key that provides abbreviation explanations? I am fairly sports savvy and would have to look up a couple. Thank you for resource.
Reply
Kim
7/19/2017 03:56:15 am
Maybe some of your students know those abbreviations ... A good way to provide an opp for them to teach you something perhaps?
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorJohn Stevens is working to give parents ideas on how to have mathematics-based discussion at home. Archives
May 2018
Categories |