MATH AND THE OLYMPICS:

How to use math in an Olympic Context

Websites

Summer Olympic Sports Summer Olympics Wikipedia

Summer Olympic Sports Flash Video

1. Student-generated list of how math is used in the Olympics.

How is math used in the Olympics? Some of the answers maybe….

• scoring
• points for medals
• averaging scores
• time - more than 1 run
• distance
• speed
• "hang time"
• height of jump
• height/weight/ age of athletes
• integers - hockey - goals/penalties
• statistics

2. Olympic unit initial survey.

How is each sport judged in the Olympics?

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

 3. Olympics Unit Survey: Place on monkey survey on-line to collect and analyze data

Answer each of the questions below. Please take the time to answer every question carefully as
we will be using your responses to help us develop the unit to include your interests!

1. What Summer Olympic sports do you enjoy watching?

1.

2.

3.

2. Tell us about a Summer Olympic sport that you know a lot about (the athletes, the sport itself,
etc.)

3. If you were a sport reporter assigned to the Summer Olympics, what questions would you be
interested in investigating and reporting about?

1.

2.

3.

4. For a final project for this unit, you will be working with a partner to investigate a question
that you have about the Summer Olympics, List TWO people below that you could work with on
this project. (NOTE: This project will require you and your partner to spend time together out-
of-class to work on it.)

4. "Warm-up ask for some conversions in the context of speed in sprint kayaking and
running or other sports

5. "Warm-up" ask students to compare the size of various kinds of kayaks, canoes,
rowing boats, sculls

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

 6. Handout guiding students’ initial estimation of what sport is “fastest”

Who’s the fastest?

With your partner order the following sports by their speeds from fastest to slowest in the chart
provided. Then estimate the top speed attained in each sport by kilometres p/h

Rowing-Single Scull rower Cycling

Canoe Kayak Single sprint kayak 500m Canoe Slalom- one run
Aquatics-Swimming 100m freestyle Athletics-Hurdles 100m
Sports of your choice (4)

Name(s)…………………………………………………………………………………….

SPORT TOP SPEED ACTUAL SPEED in ACTUAL SPEED

Estimate in kilometres kilometers p/h In metres p/ minute
p/hour
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

What is the range of the top actual speeds? I.e. the difference between the fastest and the
slowest

7. Record of a class discussion on what learned about speed (including a conceptual

Technical Mark Composition and Style

Tally Frequency Tally Frequency

map created by the teacher based on students' input)

8. Reading on scoring criteria in gymnastics

Handout created to help students organize the tabulation of the scores assigned by each
student
Who wins?
From the data collected in class of your sport (gymnastics, diving, trampoline etc), complete the
above frequency table

SPORT…………………………………. Name (s)……………………..

Types of averages

1.

2.

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

 3.

Other
9. Statistics
National Flags

Each country has its own defined flag representing its country.

Choose at least 10 countries participating in the Olympics and analyze the colours of their flags

Graph you results. Research into the colour that is most prominent for your finding s and give at
least three reasons based on research for your finding

Country Flag Colours

Red Blue White ? ?

Design criteria 1-3 for analyzing 10 flags you chose e.g. most appealing colour etc. And place a
mark 1-15 beside your ten flags. Find the score for each flag

Criteria 1
Criteria 2
Criteria 3
Criteria4
Criteria 5
Country Criteria 1 Criteria 2 Criteria 3 Score

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

 10. "Warm-up" ask students to order and find various averages using data from the
Men's track events race or other sports
11.
12. Excerpt from an article explaining key elements of the pentathlon

Modern Olympics

In addition to the modern pentathlon, there has also been an athletics pentathlon event for men and
women in the modern Olympic Games. The first Olympic competition for the men was at the 1912
Summer Olympics in Stockholm and for women was at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The events
of the pentathlon, in order, were:

1. 110/100 meter hurdles

2. Shot put
3. High jump
4. Long jump
5. 1500/800 meters

The javelin and the 800 meters were added in the 1984 Summer Olympics to create the women's
heptathlon. The hurdles race also became 100 meters.

13. Give a measuring task designed to help students better understand what is involved
in the pentathlon

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

 14. Discussion on medal rankings and alternatives

Olympic Statistics Medals

Wikipedia medal Counts

Look at the medal counts by country

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total

United
1 36 39 27 102
States (USA)

2 China (CHN) 32 17 14 63

3 Russia (RUS) 27 27 38 92

4 Australia (AUS) 17 16 16 49

5 Japan (JPN) 16 9 12 37

6 Germany (GER) 13 16 20 49

7 France (FRA) 11 9 13 33

8 Italy (ITA) 10 11 11 32

South
9 9 12 9 30
Korea (KOR)

Great
10 9 9 12 30
Britain (GBR)

11 Cuba (CUB) 9 7 11 27

12 Ukraine (UKR) 9 5 9 23

13 Hungary (HUN) 8 6 3 17

14 Romania (ROU) 8 5 6 19

15 Greece (GRE) 6 6 4 16

16 Brazil (BRA) 5 2 3 10

17 Norway (NOR) 5 0 1 6

Kidawson
18 Olympic(NED)
Netherlands Math 20084 9 9 22

19 Sweden (SWE) 4 2 1 7
Kidawson Olympic Math 2008
 •
• Look at the above medal count. What would happen to the table if only the total was
taken into account? Compare between two alternative medal counts – gold medals and
country totals.
• Why are they different?
• What do you think is more fair and why?
• Think of another way of ranking data you think would be even fairer.
• What would happen to the medal table if Gold=3 Silver=2 Bronze=1?
• What would happen if countries were grouped by size and the number of athletes
competing? What if % were used?

15. Background Information and Ideas about measurement within the Olympics

Issues about measurement and its history -- What, how and why we measure

WHY THINGS ARE MEASURED:

• mostly, it is a (usually preliminary) step to determine who wins an event and to rank the
other participants -- (NOTE: in most sports, the ranking ends up being "complete", but
not always -- ex: hockey; but this is a point may be to consider more when I think about
the issue of order)
• measurements necessary to prepare the right conditions to play the game (ex: length the
speed skaters have to cover in each specific event; position of poles in slalom;
dimensions of hockey field and exact position of "goal door" -- (NOTE: I realize I am
lacking a lot of precise sport terminology! the need to use precise terminology here could
provide an interesting analogy with the use of precise terminology in math -- something
worth thinking about...); etc.)
• in a sense, we could also talk of the use a person can make by knowing his/her
competitors "measures" in an event (what do they need to do in order to "beat him/her" or
win, how it compares with their "average" or "best" performance (NOTE: this could
actually lead to some statistics and probability considerations... worth thinking about)

WHAT IS MEASURED?

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

 • time taken to complete an event (ex: most athletics, canoeing swimming (not relevant in:
pole-jump, hockey)
• Speed (average? instant?) (ex: running)
• Accuracy of performance -- this could be more or less objectively determined; objective
ex: number of targets made/ missed in pentathlon (?) -- subjective ex: artistic score in
rhymic gymnastics
• distance -- ex: how far one jumps with long jump ; what a sprint kayaker has to paddle;
• medals won by a country (notice here how gold, silver and bronze are essentially not
comparable, unless we explicitly create "ways" to do so)

NOT SURE IF "WHAT" OR "HOW":

• "Scoring" used to combine target shooting and speed in pentathlon (?)

• measuring of time, etc. when participants go in "batches" (ex: 2 speed skaters a time)

HOW IS MEASURED -- i.e., what UNITS are used:

• TIME: hours, minutes, seconds, 1/100th of second (NOTE: scores are "mixed numbers")
• DISTANCE: miles/ km / m etc. (when would you choose one versus the other? why? how
do you convert?)
• SPEED: miles/hour; kilometers/hour; meter/sec. (why these "compounded" units? when
would you choose one versus the other? why? how do you convert?)
• many things are measured in whole numbers, by just counting

HOW IS MEASURED -- i.e., what TOOLS and APPROACHES are used:

• speed -- requires actually measuring distance and time; average vs. instant
• How can a skier time really be measured? (Technology used, etc.; it may be quite
different for a cross country biker or a slalom paddlers; also, you probably have two
different people and instruments measuring at "beginning and end" -- how can those be
coordinated?)
• "elimination rounds" (ex: hockey) (how do they really work? when are they necessary/
useful in a sport)
• Competitors going one at the time (ex: slalom), in groups of 2-n (ex: speed skating),
altogether (some cross country skiing, perhaps?) -- Why? How different is this from
having elimination rounds?
• how are borderline cases decided (ex: bullet hitting the target on line)
• averaging several runs (ex: bob, sled)

WHAT IS COMMON IN PREVIOUS EXAMPLES:

• Essentially all measurements end up being expressed in some kind of number (is it really
true all the time? is it really necessary and if so why?) (NOTE: it might be interesting to
consider what kind of numbers are or not represented -- ex: no irrationals!)
• In all the "objective" measurements, you use the same process (choose a unit, etc.)

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

WHAT IS DIFFERENT IN PREVIOUS EXAMPLES?

• some measurements use whole units (ex: goals in hockey; targets in shooting; scoring in
figure skating), others a continuum (distance)
• Competitors going one at the time (ex: slalom), in groups of 2-n (ex: speed skating),
altogether (some cross country skiing, perhaps?) -- Why? How different is this from
having elimination rounds?
• Some events use "elimination rounds" and others don't (why?)

OTHER QUESTIONS/ ISSUES THAT COULD BE RAISED:

• How do different events deal with ties? Are there events when ties are just NOT possible?
• Were any of the events measured differently in the past? If so, why/ why was it changed?
• How did people come up with criteria to measure more subjective things (ex: figure
skating)?
• How "precise" the measurements taken really are? How can these imprecision’s affect the
events? What can be done to make those measurements more "precise"?
• What is already done to make measuring more "fair"? What else could be done? (ex:
figure skating -- dropping highest and lowest mark)
• What is the "fastest" winter sport? (NOTE: one should also consider the speed of
sportsman who are not measured on speed -- ex: skating speed of hockey players)
• How would you judge who is the "best" skier? Or even the "fastest" skier?
• How would you judge whether the winner won by a large margin or not? (Difference?
ratio? why? how do you compute each of those?)

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

 16. Olympic Project Some Ideas for independent, group, and class work

Record of teacher's modeling how the proposed framework for the project could be used to
summarize the results of their inquiry around
"Who's fastest?"

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

Quest: A question in your area of interest. Who’s fastest?
Graphs and Tables- bar graphs on sports, flags, participation numbers, countries attending
historically, speed factors, medal counts
Data gathering: research, newspaper articles, timed events,
Drawing conclusions: analyzing data and reporting in different ways. Are the results always the
same?

OLYMPIC UNIT PROJECT

You are a math reporter covering the Summer Olympic Games in Norway. Your assignment is
to write an article about an aspect of the Summer games that involves mathematics.

Your project will have 5 parts worth the following points:

QUEST - A question in your area of interest (5 points)

DATA - From magazines, newspapers, T.V., etc. (10 points)

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008

GRAPHS AND TABLES - Frequency table and 2 graphs (choose from bar, line, pictograph, or
circle graph) (25 points)

BEHIND THE SCENES: What factors effect your data? Identify and provide information about
the story behind the data. (10 points)

CONCLUSIONS - Written in newspaper article form with headline and any supporting graphs or
pictures. This article should include mean, median, mode and range, if appropriate to your data,
in order to help you draw your conclusions. (30 points)

Kidawson Olympic Math 2008