9MATC Take a Shot at Real-World Maths

Exploring Statistics Through Basketball

On Wednesday afternoon, Year 9 Core Mathematics students swapped textbooks for basketballs in a hands-on investigation that combined physical activity with statistical analysis. In this engaging task, each student took 15 basketball shots, carefully recording the number of successful attempts. The aim? To collect real data and apply statistical tools to analyse class performance. Once the shots were taken, the maths began. Students constructed frequency distribution tables, calculated totals, and used formulas to find the mean, mode, range, standard deviation, median, and quartiles of their dataset. They also created box and whisker plots—a powerful visual representation of how data is spread. Using a detailed scaffold students were able to write a summary paragraph on our class statistics.

This hands-on task made maths active, meaningful, and engaging, showing how data and statistics apply in the real world. Well done to all our sharp-shooting statisticians!

Mrs Liliana Appleby

Maths Teacher