We are happy to report that both the Baltimore Ravens and the Chicago Bears won their games this weekend against the Browns and Jets, respectively. The games were nail-biters, but some students in Decatur, Ill., may not care about the final scores as much as the individual player stats.
That’s because two sixth-grade math classes at Stevenson School are competing against each other this fall in a friendly game of fantasy football, the Herald-Review reports.
Teachers Erin Hargrove and Ben Steele have incorporated a revised model for fantasy football into their math lessons. In ordinary fantasy football, players pick teams by combining players from several different teams and earn points based on how the players on their team perform each weekend.
For the two classes at Stevenson, there’s still the chance to pick fantasy teams, but the teachers use formulas to compute points. For every 5 rushing yards gained by a player, that player’s team gets a point; for every 25 passing yards gained, the team gets a point.
where T = total points, p = total passing yards, and r = total rushing yards.
Why’s there a difference between rushing and passing yards? Kaela Durbin, one of the students, explained it’s easier to gain yardage by passing than by rushing.
Fair enough. Of course, in football, there are no fractional scores, so kids don’t actually deal with any remainders—they just throw them away.
If Kaela’s team earned 21 points and had a total of 175 passing yards, what’s the minimum number of rushing yards her team must have gained? See Common Core math standard 7.EE.B.4.A, a seventh-grade math standard that applies nicely here, for more information. Explain how you found your answer.
