MARCH MADNESS!!

                                                                                       

INTRODUCTION   TASK PROCEDURES
RESOURCES EVALUATION CONCLUSION

                   


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 NCAA tournament and explain the importance of Mathematics in basketball.

 

 
 

PROCEDURES

1.  You may work in groups of 4.

2.  Find a copy of this years NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket in  
     the resources provided.  Print a copy to use through the rest of the
     WebQuest.  Print ONE bracket that has all four regions on it.  Use
     the resources provided to find out where each college or university
     is located.  Locate the states for the schools in your region.  Only
     the state is needed.  You may record this information on your
     bracket beside the name of each school. 

3.  Research the stats of the teams.  Each member will 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 Team Statistics
    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
    The Elimination worksheet.  Look at your bracket to answer the
    questions.

5.  Probability is our next area of focus.  Answer the probability
    questions on the Take Your Chances worksheet with this
    information.

6.  Select a newspaper 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 are mentioned.  Write a brief paragraph
    explaining the importance of Mathematics in basketball.

 

 
RESOURCES

Official NCAA Site

History of NCAA Basketball

Complete Listing of Colleges and Universities

Mr. Hoops Big Ten Basketball

NCAA Championships

Fans Only - College Sports

NCAA Tournament Facts and Numbers

 
EVALUATION

You will be evaluated on the completeness and accuracy of your worksheets and the paragraph written about your article.  For more details, look at the rubric.

 
CONCLUSION

Have we found a winner?  You can consider yourself an NCAA champion if you can now see all of the mathematics that surrounds the NCAA basketball tournament.  Through this WebQuest, you located patterns; calculated fractions, decimals, and percents; and found many connections with probability.  See if you can relate these same facts to the Sweet 16 Tournament for High School Basketball.  Do the same math facts still apply?  You'll See!

 

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