Maths Exploration – Feasibility Plan

Name: Teacher:

Maths Course (Standard/Higher):

Due Date: 12th June 2014

This is designed to help you plan your Maths Exploration. Answer the questions as concisely as you can – avoid any vagueness! After reading the document your teacher should have an idea of what you are going to explore and how you are going to do it.

What is your area of interest? eg Geography, Probability, Basketball

Sports (football/tennis), Movies, Natural disasters, Stats, Probability

What is your proposed title for your Exploration?

How does the amount of wages and debt affect the win ratio of football clubs?

What is the aim of your Exploration? i.e. what do you want to show

I would like to show the correlation between the player’s performance and their wages as well as the correlation between the club’s debts with their win rate.

Why have you chosen this topic as your Exploration?

I have an interest in statistics as well as football; therefore I would also like to understand these 2 correlations, as it is a surprisingly interesting topic for me.

How does your topic relate to Mathematics and what mathematical areas will you explore? eg algebra, geometry etc

It relates to statistics, where the correlation coefficient is used to determine if my hypothesis is true.

What key mathematical concepts/skills will you use? e.g. curve fitting, modelling data

After preparing the data, I will need to plot a scatter plot to calculate the regression line and the correlation coefficient

Will you need any maths outside the syllabus?

None outside will be needed.

What technology/software will you use to support your exploration?

I will use numerous football statistics websites as well as an online scatter graph plotter. A calculator is also used to calculate the means, correlations, and deviations of the data.

What resources/material are you planning to use/research and/or how will you collect your data/information?

I will use the websites “whoscored.com” and the guardian datablog, as they have many articles analysing the finances for Premier League clubs, where I will be basing my research on. I will be using Microsoft excel to collect and process my data, where I will then use Logger Pro to create my graph and find out the data needed to summarize my research question

Outline in a brief, sequenced way how you plan to write your exploration.Eg what is in the introduction, how will you gather data, what will the main body be about etc

In my introduction, I will briefly describe what I will be doing (correlations for team wages and team performance, debt and win ratio), then outline what tools I will be using to complete my maths exploration.

Next, I will use different websites to collect useful data which then I will place it in to a table in excel.

After a basic description of each parts of the data and why I need it, the data will then be processed to be compatible to creating a graph. Then the data will be placed onto an online scatter plot, where I can calculate different aspects, which will prove if there is connection between the areas I am researching.

This exploration will then end with a conclusion analysing the patterns of the data as well as the reasons why the correlations are true or false.

What are some of the reflection points you may want to consider as you write your exploration? Eg how could it be better, what other sources to use, type of data etc

Maybe more correlations could be put into account?

It is recommended that you keep an exploration journal. This will help you to focus on your topic and remind you of deadlines. It allows you to make notes of any books or website so you can include them in your bibliography. Keeping a record of your actions can show your teacher how much time you are spending on your exploration. Include any meetings you have with your teacher etc…….