The Debate: Who is the Better Baller?

Name:______Class:______Date:______

Guided notes and practice

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The San Antonio Spurs defeated the Miami Heat in the 2014 NBA Finals. Many people continue to debate the question “Who is a better player, Tim Duncan or Lebron James?” The following data shows the number of Field Goals attempted (FGA) by each player in the last 5 playoff games series, use the datato have an informed discussion about the performance of the two players during the final games.

Tim: 10, 10, 7, 14, 10

Lebron: 21, 17, 14, 22, 17

  1. What is the smallest number of goals attempted by Tim? ______Lebron? ______
  1. The smallest number in your data set is called the ______.
  1. What was the largest amount of goals attempted by Tim? ______Lebron? ______
  1. The largest number in your data set is called the ______.
  1. Put the numbers in order from least to greatest and identify the median number of goals attemptedby each player.
  1. Tim:
  1. Lebron:
  1. The median separates the data into halves, (lower half and upper half). Now for each half identify its median.
  1. Tim: Lower half______. Upper half______
  1. Lebron: Lower half______. Upper half______
  1. The median of the lower half with the smaller numbers is called the______(Q1).
  2. The median of the upper half with the larger numbers is called the ______(Q3).
  3. You should have identified 5 different numbers for each player. Write these in order from least to greatest.
  1. Tim:
  1. Lebron:
  1. Using GeoGebra, create box plots for each player. Copy the plot on your paper.
  1. Find the interquartile range (IQR). What percent of the data is in the interquartile range?(Q3 minus Q1). A
  1. Tim:
  1. Lebron:
  1. Who has the larger IQR?
  1. The IQR shows that between games 2 and 4 ______attempted more Field Goals than ______.
  1. Calculate the mean FGA for each player.
  1. Tim:
  1. Lebron:
  1. Now we want to see how widely spread out the FGA are so we will need to calculate the Standard Deviation. Complete the table to find the Variance (Find the difference between each number and the mean, square that difference, and then average the sum).

Tim’s FGA per game / Tim’s FGA – Tim’s Mean
= T / T2 / Lebron FGA per game / Lebron’s FGA – Lebron’s Mean
= L / L2
10 / 21
10 / 17
7 / 14
14 / 22
10 / 17
Sum of T2 = / Sum of L2 =
Sum of T2 ÷ n = / Sum of L2 ÷ n =

**in the table n represents the total number of games.

  1. What is the variance (Sum of T2 ÷ n) for both players?
  2. Tim’s FGA variance ______.
  1. Lebrons FGA variance ______.
  1. Find the Standard Deviation for both players (take the square root of variance).
  2. Tim:
  1. Lebron:

The Standard Deviation is the number that gives you the normal spread of FGA for each player about his mean FGA. It means that the number of FGA could be that many points above or below his mean FGA; approximately 68 percent of FGA should be within plus or minus this range.

According to my calculations ______FGA showed a higher Standard Deviation. Therefore, ______had a more consistent game series based on a Standard Deviation that is ______to his mean.