Investigation: Sports Team Analysis

Congratulations, you have just won ownership rights to the sports team of your choosing! In this investigation you will analyze data on two sports teams of your choice and determine which one you want to own.

Objectives

• To practice using graphs and charts to represent real-life data.
• To practice determining which graphical representation best fits a set of data.
• To practice interpreting and comparing graphs and sets of data.

Materials

• Computer
• Construction paper or computer paper

Procedure

1. On your own or in a small group pick two teams from the same sport. For example, I could choose the Yankees, and the Orioles because they are both baseball teams.
2. Decide on the facts you want to know about each player on the team and about the team in general. You will research the same facts for both teams. These facts should be designed to help you determine which is the better team. Make sure you have at least 3. Some possible things you could research include: height of all players, age of all players, goals scored in each match by the team, etc.
   Hint!

   Try to pick your topics of research in such a way that you can use a different type of graph for each one.

3. Decide what kind of graph will best represent the data for each fact you are going to look up. You have a choice of using:
   • Stem and Leaf Plot
   • Dot Plot
   • Column Graph
   • Bar Graph
   • Histogram
   • Scatter Plot (use to graph some variable with respect to time)
   • Box and Whisker Plot

4. Research the facts you chose.

5. For each fact you research use a different graph from the list to represent the data. Each graph should be on its own piece of construction paper. Be sure to label the title and any axes.

Questions

For each fact you researched answer the following questions.

1. Why did you choose this graph to represent the data?
2. What is the median of the data? What is the mean of the data?
3. What are the minimum and maximum values of the data? What is the range of the data?
4. What is the mode of the data?
5. What are the lower quartile and upper quartile for the data?
6. Are there any outliers in the data? If there are outliers, remove them and recalculate the mean, median, and range of the data. Were they affected? If so, which was affected the most? Why do you think that is?

Decision Time

1. After you have answered the questions for all of the facts you researched, compare the statistics for each.
2. Based on the data you researched, what team do you want to own? Explain your reasoning.

 

Discussion Questions

1. For each type of graph explain what type of data you think is best used to represent and explain your reasoning:
   • Stem and Leaf Plot
   • Dot Plot
   • Column Graph
   • Bar Graph
   • Histogram
   • Scatter Plot (use to graph some variable with respect to time)
   • Box and Whisker Plot  
2. Compare the different types of graphs you used. Do you feel the way one type of graph represents data is better than another? Why or why not?