Project Introduction

The Austin Independent School District suffers from an obvious discrepancy in the race of its students and their success on standardized tests. Students are clearly not relating the math they are learning to a real world application and without this; it is more difficult to attain any real understanding.

With the explosion of the National Basketball Associations popularity over the last few years and the wave of high school players entering the draft, or attempting to baring new legislation, the NBA has greatly benefited from this fan base of younger dreamers. Be merging the NBA and mathematics, students not only use an interesting real world example to drive home important basic mathematics ideas, but also give students insight into a world of business and professional sports that most find intriguing.

This project uses the backdrop of students managing their own professional basketball team to teach pivotal concepts of slope, correlation, and functions. Students will draft their own team using correlation and probability. They will then be responsible for managing this team and making mathematically sound trade choices to ensure their teams success. Groups will keep tabs on every trade they make and the statistics behind their team. In the end students will turn in a final portfolio including graphs and charts, with written out sentences of the math behind their managerial decisions.

By embedding these ideas in the context of professional sports students will be able to construct their own definitions and meanings to these terms giving them a better grasp on mathematical ideas; building a solid understanding on these essential ideas will ensure greater success in mathematics in their future.

The biggest problem in this project can be finding the stats and knowing how to trade the players. Up to date stats can be found at http://www.nba.com/statistics/player/Scoring.jsp. The attached sheet shows the statistics as of the 2005-2006 regular season, not involving the playoffs. Salaries are not included in this chart because it is up to the teacher to decide how to handle that. The suggested method is to give each group a cap, and then give each player a price based on their stats (real salary information can be found on each player at www.nba.com). Once teams are drafted and selections have been made, groups must use their statistics to decide how to manage their teams. Each week teams play games, meaning the teacher assigns stats to each player and the group is responsible for putting these stats together to see how their team fared. If the students wish to trade a player then they must arrange it with another group and justify their trade decisions with mathematical reasoning. All these trades and statistics are kept in a journal that is to be turned in at the end of the project.