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Charting More Success

Age 11 to 16
Challenge Level Yellow star
  • Problem
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Alexander, from Wilson's School, was the only one to submit a solution this time round! Here's what he thought of our graphs:

The first diagram portrays a lot of information:

  • Most of the shots made into the hoop were closer to the hoop than the misses.
  • Also, more of the shots were made from the left hand side of the hoop, and most of the baskets scored were also made from the left hand side, with only four shots made from the right side, all of which were misses.
  • Out of the seventeen shots made in total, only three managed to go through the hoop.

This shows that the team got less than a fifth of their shots in so they have to practise shooting, especially from the right side.

The second diagram also shows me a lot:

  • The highest score ever made for first place was in 1988, where the winner received by far the highest score, 7300.
  • It also tells me that in 1984, the first three positions where very closely tied.
  • Coincidently, the lowest score that was made by somebody in first position was at the same event, where all the scores were very close.
  • In other years, first position scores were considerably better than second place scores.
  • Also, in the first of the years charted, most of the position's lowest scores were made that year.
  • The most separated positions have been the first and second. The 5th to 10th positions often come in quite close to each other point-wise.

In this final picture:

  • It seems that, almost every shot the team gets on target, scores if it is not blocked.
  • The team scored six goals, all of which were on target, and eight (1 on target and 7 blocked) other shots that they got on target they did not score. So therefore they managed to score 6/14 of their shots that were on target.
  • The team scored a total of 6/22 shots and got a total of 14/22 shots on target and eight out of 22 shots were off target. 

This means they need to work a bit on their shooting skills as they do not seem to score a lot of goals compared to the ones that they missed. This team should practise shooting towards the goal in a way that won't get blocked.

Fantastic work - thanks, Alexander!

An anonymous student on our blog made the comment:

The lines are misleading: they don't represent countries at all! They represent "1st place", "2nd place" etc. If the lines were countries the graph would be more useful.

What do you think?

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The NRICH Project aims to enrich the mathematical experiences of all learners. To support this aim, members of the NRICH team work in a wide range of capacities, including providing professional development for teachers wishing to embed rich mathematical tasks into everyday classroom practice.

NRICH is part of the family of activities in the Millennium Mathematics Project.

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