Mathematics and Sports
Mathematics and Sports
This is an eclectic compendium of the essays solicited for the 2010 Mathematics Awareness Month Web page on the theme of 'Mathematics and Sports'. In keeping with the goal of promoting mathematics awareness to a broad audience, all of the articles are accessible to university-level mathematics students and many are accessible to the general public. The book is divided into sections by the kind of sports. The section on American football includes an article that evaluates a method for reducing the advantage of the winner to a coin flip in an NFL overtime game; the section on track and field examines the ultimate limit on how fast a human can run 100 metres; the section on baseball includes an article on the likelihood of streaks; the section on golf has an article that describes the double-pendulum model of a golf swing and an article on modelling Tiger Woods' career.
- Contains essays on many popular sports such as tennis, golf, football and basketball
- Uses real-world sports examples to engage students
- Promotes mathematics awareness to a broader audience
Product details
No date availablePaperback
9780883853498
342 pages
229 × 153 × 18 mm
0.47kg
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Part I. Baseball:
- 1. Sabermetrics: the past, the present, and the future Jim Albert
- 2. Surprising streaks and playoff parity: probability problems in a sports context Rick Cleary
- 3. Did humidifying the baseball decrease the number of homers at Coors Field? Howard Penn
- 4. Streaking: finding the probability for a batting streak Stanley Rothman and Quoc Le
- Part II. Basketball:
- 5. Bracketology: how can math help? Tim Chartier, Erich Kreutzer, Amy Langville and Kathryn Pedings
- 6. Down 4 with a minute to go G. Edgar Parker
- 7. Jump shot mathematics Howard Penn
- Part III. Football:
- 8. How deep is your playbook? Tricia Muldoon Brown and Eric B. Kahn
- 9. A look at overtime in the NFL Chris Jones
- 10. Extending the Colley method to generate predictive football rankings R. Drew Pasteur
- 11. When perfect isn't good enough: retrodictive rankings in college football R. Drew Pasteur
- Part IV. Golf:
- 12. The science of a drive Douglas N. Arnold
- 13. Is Tiger Woods a winner? Scott M. Berry
- 14. G. H. Hardy's golfing adventure Roland Minton
- 15. Tigermetrics Roland Minton
- Part V. NASCAR:
- 16. Can mathematics make a difference? Exploring tire troubles in NASCAR Cheryll E. Crowe
- Part VI. Scheduling:
- 17. Scheduling a tournament Dalibor Froncek
- Part VII. Soccer:
- 18. Bending a soccer ball with math Tim Chartier
- Part VIII. Tennis:
- 19. Teaching mathematics and statistics using tennis Reza Noubary
- 20. Percentage play in tennis G. Edgar Parker
- Part IX. Track and Field:
- 21. The effects of altitude in the 400m sprint with various IAAF track geometries Vanessa Alday and Michael Frantz
- 22. Mathematical ranking of the Division III Track and Field Conferences Chris Fisette
- 23. What is the speed limit for Men's 100 Meter Dash? Reza Noubary
- 24. May the best team win: determining the winner of a cross country race Stephen Szydlik
- 25. Biomechanics of running and walking Anthony Tongen and Roshna E. Wunderlich.
