March+Mathness

 INTRODUCTION

Let's get ready to rumble! It's March Madness time which means, you guessed it - Basketball! Basketball is not only a sport filled with excitement, slam dunks, and unbelievable athletes; it also is full of mathematical concepts as you will find in this webquest!

TASK

In this webquest, you will look at many different areas of math found in the NCAA basketball tournament. You will use the NCAA bracket to look at all the teams participating in the tournament. The world of math will come alive as you find fractions, decimals, and percents; probability statistics; make predictions; and look for patterns. By the end of this webquest, you will be able to relate a variety of math facts to the NCAA tournament and explain the importance of Mathematics in basketball. PROCEDURES

1. You may work in groups of two, four, or individually. Your teacher will decide this before you begin. 2. Find a copy of this year's NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket in the resources provided. Print a copy to use through the rest of the webquest. 3. Research the stats of the teams. If you are working in teams, each member may be responsible for one region (southeast, east, midwest, and west). You will be looking for information about their past NCAA wins and their records for this year. You will need to print out the __//** Bracket Breakdown **//__ worksheet to record your data. Answer all the questions on the worksheet.

4. How do patterns relate to the NCAA Tournament? Print a copy of **//__T__//** __ **//he Bracket Buster//** __ worksheet. Look at your bracket to answer the questions.

5. Probability is our next area of focus. Use the resources provided to find out where each college or university is located. If you are working in teams, located the states for the schools in your region. Only the state is needed. You may record this information on your bracket out beside the name of each school. Answer the probability questions on the **//__Leave it to Chance__//** worksheet with this information.

6. Select a newpaper article from the resources that deals with one game or team from the tournament. This needs to be done independently. Print the article from the website. From that article, record all the statistics that arm mentioned. Write a brief paragraph explaining the importance of Mathematics in basketball.

RESOURCES

2011 NCAA Me's Bracket

2011 NCAA Men's Rankings

Championship History

Locate my school

EVALUATION

You will be evaluated on the completeness and accuracy of your worksheets and the paragraph written about your article.