All week I've been thinking about how on earth I was going to think of a topic for our creative math post. Some came up, but they were truly boring and didn't actually apply to my personal life really. Until today, during swim practice, I realized that I use math ALL THE TIME, so do many other sports. Obviously it's not just the simple adding of goals, touchdowns, and points in team sports, but also math related in time, especially in swimming and track.
For instance, today Coach Simon and Zimbrano taught us about a "Russian Time", which was something completely new to us all. Basically, it's a time we received on a 50 yard swim, plus an average amount of strokes we took per lap. The goal at the end of the set, was to reduce your Russian Time, but keep the average stroke count the same.
Another thing I realized was how swimming is solely based on time standards, which really correlate to math in practice. For instance, in order to reach a certain time during our meets, we practice by going a certain average time in practice, making sure we hit that pace every single time. Eventually, our goals get faster and we have to calculate it all again. In addition, when we're practicing. We use math all the time, because every swimmer calculates their own personal time using the clock on the scoreboard. So basically, we all become professionals at the 60 second clock system, being able to understand how much we need to subtract compared to the time we leave. We also figure out our averages by dividing bigger times, finding the average we need for shorter distances.
Even though the math we use isn't as complicated as parabolas, trig functions, or systems of equations, it's still math and it's all mental math. Which is a lot harder than you think, especially when your body is tired AND you still have to use your mental juices. All in all, math is used all the time, even in your daily routines, such as swim practice. But sometimes, too much math is just too much and you can't handle it!
I agree with this completely. I am also in swim, and yes I have noticed that math comes into play quite a bit throughout practice. Time is a significant factor to our success, and measures how much we need to improve to increase our speed and efficiency as a swimmer. Whether it is referring to the clock to determine the length of time it took to swim 100 yards or the number of minutes left in practice, mental math is definitely something we use on a regular basis, and should be a skill reinforced at all levels of math.
ReplyDeleteThis is very interesting! I too, was thinking about how much we use math in life the other day. In Ap gov we were learning about marginal analysis and how weighing options against each other is key in economics. The more I thought about it, the more I began t realize how much we use this analysis in every day in life. Almost every decision we make uses this greater than less than concept,
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