Blog 6

Blog #6! Decimals & Baseball! 

Observation: After discussing decimals in class not too long ago, I found a way to make learning decimals a little more current and interesting for students. Teachers are always looking for ways to get students motivated in a subject, and what better way than to incorporate something current and popular among young kids- sports! Over the weekend, I watched one of the baseball playoff games, the Detroit Tigers against Oakland Athletics. While watching the very exciting game, it occurred to me how much math, especially division and decimal work goes into the sport of baseball!

Reflection:  To find a player's batting average, one would divide the number of times that player gets up to bat by the number of times he actually hits the ball and gets on base.  To then find the same players gross production average, you multiply his on-base percentage by 1.8 and add the slugging average and you divide by 4.  When doing all of these divisions and such, the answer is always written in decimal form.  For example, one of the greatest players on the Detroit Tiger's Miguel Cabrera, his AVG is 0.330, OBP (on-base percentage) is .393, his SLG is .606 and his OPS (on-base plus slugging) is .999.

Reflection on Reflection:  It is amazing how much sports really do incorporate mathematics.  Not only in baseball can you do the above math for every single player, but you can also do it for the team as a whole. The students still understand the concept you are trying to teach them and can actually apply it to something they can use in their lives.  This is a clever way for teachers to get students who are not very motivated in math to participate. By using things they are interested in, such as sporting teams, it allows them to enjoy practicing math.