With many factors leading to a great athlete, does height make Usain Bolt unfairly fast? Middle schoolers conduct analysis to change the running distance of the Olympic races to be proportional to the height of the participants. They look at the produced scatterplots to determine whether the race should be changed based on height to make it fair. 

Concepts

olympic athletes, olympic sports, the olympics, proportional reasoning, proportions, scatter plots, constant of proportionality

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Additional Tags

math

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Instructional Ideas

• Use heights of class members and perform an actual race with the proportional distances
• Use the extension activities for further exploration 

Classroom Considerations

• The links for the attachments expire after one day
• Learners do not need to have prior knowledge of proportions, as it is introduced with the lesson

Pros

• The idea of a constant of proportionality is unknowingly learned as a short cut without being addressed
• Comes with downloadable links to the lesson guide, student worksheet, and extension activities

Cons

• None

Common Core

7.RP.A.2.a 7.RP.A.3 MP1 MP3 MP4