athletics datafiles athletics Sports Datafiles Activity Sheets for Junior ViewPoint and ViewPoint

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1 athletics athletics datafiles Sports Datafiles Activity Sheets for Junior ViewPoint and ViewPoint

2 Logotron Sport Datafiles: Athletics The files in this set 1. Olympics This datafile contains information about the gold, silver and bronze medal winners in the athletics events at each of the past six Olympic Games. Contents of this booklet Page 1 - Contents Page 2 - Handling large sets of data + Using this booklet Page 3 - Using ICT for real surveys Page 4 - What is in the datafile? Page 5 - Looking at the data in the datafile Page 6 - Using searches to answer questions Page 7 - Looking at countries Page 8 - Looking at gender Page 9 - Have results improved over the years? Page 10 - Statistics Page 11 - Answers 1

3 Handling large sets of Data One of the problems associated with data handling activities in schools is that usually too little data is used. For example, a class of children may spend a lot of time collecting and entering local data, perhaps about the cars their teachers drive. At the end of their work, they are able to prove something which was probably already well known, or could have easily been seen by looking through the window. One can forgive the cynic who considers the need to use ICT for data handling to be unproven! In the real world, however, large data sets are constantly used for purposes which range from traffic surveys to tracking consumer spending, and include comparing the skills of top sports men and women, their teams and their countries. When large amounts of data are involved, things are very different. It is impossible to see patterns or predict results without the use of ICT and you really do see its value when you have hundreds, or even thousands of sheets in your Junior ViewPoint datafile. This is where the Logotron Sport datafiles will really help you cover the data handling aspects of ICT and give your students a head start in the use of ICT for data handling. These ViewPoint and Junior ViewPoint datafiles from Logotron, which are available free for you to download, give your students the opportunity to investigate and interrogate sets of real data on a series of topical sports which take place regularly in the world arena. You can use them to support topical work to accompany the live events or simply use them at any time to provide focused work with a theme that will appeal to almost all children. Using this booklet The questions in this booklet are suggestions only. They will encourage you to look deeper into the data and show some of the many investigations you can conduct. They are not exhaustive. In fact they only scratch the surface of what is possible. It is also important for you to devise your own investigations and see what you can discover as you look deeper into the data. If you find yourself devising questions and interrogations of your own, please send them to us by so that we can add the best ones to our website and make them available to a wider audience. 2

4 Using ICT for real surveys There is one other aspect of data handling which you should be aware of. The questions contained in this activity book and all the investigations which you might devise for yourselves are of necessity restricted to the data that is actually contained in the datafiles. For example, if you had hoped to find details of altitude for some of the events you would not be able to do it simply because that data is not contained in the any of the datafiles. To answer that question you'd need to be able to find the altitude of all the event venues and then either add them to this database or create a new database in which one of the fields holds that data. It is important to understand this because it can save you a lot of time later on. With the skills you will learn interrogating the datafiles in the Logotron Sport Series, you may well find yourself wanting to use computer data handling to answer questions of your own. If you do this, it is essential to do things in the right order: Decide what questions you wish to answer Decide what data you will need in order to answer those questions Create a suitable database ready to contain your data Collect the actual data and enter it into your datafile. This is how real surveys are conducted and there are no short cuts. Imagine commissioning Gallup to question thousands of people about their shopping habits, then spending time entering all the data into your database and only then discovering that you didn't have the very data which would let you answer the questions you started with. 3

5 Activity Sheet 1: What is in the datafile? Load a copy of Junior ViewPoint or ViewPoint and open the file Olympics This datafile contains information about the Summer Olympics held in 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996 and For each Games, the file holds information about the Gold, Silver and Bronze medal winners in a number of athletics events. The events contained are: Men s events Running Hurdles Jumping Throwing 100 metres 110 metres hurdles High jump Discus 200 metres 400 metres hurdles Long jump Javelin 400 metres Triple jump 800 metres 1,500 metres 5,000 metres 10,000 metres Marathon Women s events Running Hurdles Jumping Throwing 100 metres 110 metres hurdles High jump Discus 200 metres 400 metres hurdles Long jump Javelin 400 metres Triple jump 800 metres 1,500 metres 3,000 metres 5,000 metres 10,000 metres Marathon Look at the information contained in the file: Plot a pie chart of Year. You will see this chart. Notice that 1980 seems to be a smaller segment. Try a bar graph of the same field and you'll see that some years have less events. Charts of the Event name field will show which events appear less often. Plot a graph of Venue and you'll see charts which are identical but have the venue for the Games instead of the year. Explore the data in a little more detail: 1. Are there more men or more women contained in the file? Which country has achieved the most medals? Where were the 1984 Olympic Games held? Where did the 2000 Olympic Games take place? What is the current men's high jump record?... 4

6 Activity Sheet 2: Looking at the data in the datafile Load a copy of Junior ViewPoint or ViewPoint and open the file Olympics Denmark has only won one medal. 1. Which medal was it (gold, silver or bronze)? Who won it? In which event was it won? At which Olympic Games was it won?... (place)... (year) There are several other countries which gained only one medal. They include: Burundi, Colombia, Djibouti, Ivory Coast, Khazakstan, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Zambia. You might like to look for these countries on a map. Are they all small countries? Imagine how proud you would be if you had won your country's only Olympic medal. 5. Find out who won the gold medal for these events: Year Event Gold medal winner Country Women s 200 metres Men s 10,000 metres Men s javelin Women s marathon 6. Who won the gold medal in the women's high jump in Moscow? Who won gold in the men's 1500 metres in Los Angeles? How long was the men s winning javelin throw in Seoul? Who won the women's 100 metres in Barcelona? Fatuma Roba won the women's marathon in How long did she take? Gezahng Abera won the men's marathon in When was he born and which country did he represent? Now see if you can devise some questions of your own. 5

7 Activity Sheet 3: Using searches to answer questions Load a copy of Junior ViewPoint or ViewPoint and open the file Olympics Searching a database seems to be a very simple process in that you type in a word and the software finds all the entries that match. But this is very simple searching and is only useful for answering the most basic questions. Let s try to answer a more difficult question which will help you understand the searching process. The question is in which events have Russian men been most successful?. We shall follow the steps one at a time: First, select all the Russian entries in the datafile. Click on Search and type Russia in the Country field. 1. You are now viewing only the Russian entries. How many are there?... Click on search again but this time click in the Gender field. If you are in List view an arrow shows that this is a multiple choice question and if you click on it you will see that the choices are 'male' or 'female'. Choose Male. This time you will see a dialogue box which asks an important question. Choose Narrow down the search (only look in old subset). This will pick out the men from the Russian entries you have already selected. Make sure you understand what this means and what each of the other choices mean. The results of the search will be very different in each case. The table below will help you understand the choices. New search (ignore old subset) Widen the search (add found records to the subset) Narrow down the search (only look in the subset) This will forget your Russian entries and start a new search, selecting every male athlete in the entire file. This will keep your subset of Russian athletes but will add all the other men in the file, regardless of whether they are Russian or not. This will keep your subset of Russian athletes and will reduce it by picking out just the male athletes. 2. You are now viewing only the Russian men who won medals. How many are there?... If you plot a bar chart of medals you will see the graph on the right. You'll see that the Russian male athletes won five gold, three silver and seven bronze medals. Note that some changes have been made: the title has been re-written and the legend has been removed. You should always do this when you decide to include a graph in a piece of writing. The changes you make will vary according to the graph you have produced but your aim will be to make it more readable. Select only the gold medal winners. Do this with a third search, this time clicking on the medal field. Choose to narrow down the search again. 3. You now have the Russian male gold medal winners selected. How many are there?... You can now answer the original question by plotting a graph of Name of Event. 4. The events in which Russian men won gold medals are:... Whilst you have the Russian male athletes selected, try other graphs and statistics to see what else you can discover about their performance. Important note about searching: It is possible to perform all three searches at the same time by entering your search term in all three fields at the same time. Check the dialogue box carefully. It is slightly different but the same rules apply. Now that you have mastered the skills of searching, try the same techniques for the Russian female athletes and for athletes from other countries. 6

8 Activity Sheet 4: Looking at countries Load a copy of Junior ViewPoint or ViewPoint and open the file Olympics Plot a pie chart of Country. The first thing you'll notice is that there are so many countries that Junior ViewPoint cannot fit their names around the edge. But this does not mean the chart is useless. On the contrary, it draws our attention to the fact that a few countries won many medals whilst dozens of others won just a few. The way to see them is to sort the list view by country. You can then look down the list and see which countries gained very few medals. 1. There are several countries which gained only one medal. find them in the datafile and complete the table below: Hint: Use the search tool seven times to select these seven countries. Don't forget to start a new search each time. Country Medal Won Event Won Athletes Name Burundi Colombia Denmark Djibouti Ivory Coast Kazakhstan New Zeland You might like to look for these countries on a map. Are they all small countries? Let us look at the high scoring countries. Plot a graph and you will see that the USA has most medals, followed by Russia and Germany, and then Great Britain. 2. Find out how many medals each country has won in the five Olympic Games in the datafile and for which events. Country Total medals Best Olympic Games Best event(s) No. of medals for this event Germany Great Britain Russia United States of America 3. Which country has won the most medals?... It will be interesting to see how they fare at this year's Olympic Games. 4. Which was Great Britain's best Olympic Games (i.e. in which Games did Great Britain win the most medals)?... (year)... (venue) 5. How many medals did Great Britain win that year?... 7

9 Activity Sheet 5: Looking at gender Load a copy of Junior ViewPoint or ViewPoint and open the file Olympics It would be interesting to know if men have won more medals than women at the Olympic Games and if different countries have different results. 1. Select all of the Americans. Are men or women more successful at gaining Olympic medals?... Hint: plot a bar or pie chart of gender 2. Do the same for Russia. Is it the same? Which gender is most successful?... How about Britain and Germany? You'll probably be interested to discover that Germany has the most equal balance of male and female medal winners with only a few more women than men winning medals. You may have already found out which was Great Britain's most successful Olympics Games. (If not, select all the British sheets and plot a graph of the year field). That year, Great Britain won thirteen medals in eleven events. 3. In which two events did Great Britain win two medals?... and... Who won the medals and which medals were they? Fill in this table with the answers: Women s javelin Event Athletes Medals Men s 1,500 metres If you plot a bar chart of venue and use gender as the set you will see that women did better than men at the Sydney Olympics but in most of the other Games, men won more medals than women. 4. In which Olympic games did women and men achieve roughly the same number of medals? How many medals were won by men at the Seoul Olympics? (Be careful - each division is two medals) How many medals were won by women at the Moscow Olympics?... 8

10 Activity Sheet 6: Have results improved over the years? Load a copy of Junior ViewPoint or ViewPoint and open the file Olympics You have probably often wondered if athletics results improve as the years go by. Search for marathon and tick male (make sure you tick "all fields must match (AND)". This will select all the medal winners in the men's marathon event for all the years in the datafile. Plot a bar graph of the year against the time in seconds and you will see that in 1984, the winners ran the distance in a shorter time than in 1980 (in other words, they ran faster). But in 1988 and 1992 they took longer each time (they ran slower). You can see this result more clearly if you alter the scaling of the graph. This is a useful technique to learn. Click on Options, then Scale. In the dialogue box which opens, remove the tick in Auto by clicking on it. Change Y Min: to 7000 and click OK. You will notice that the difference in the heights of the columns is now easier to see because it is more marked. Altering the start point on a Y axis is a technique which is often used by advertisers. See if you can alter the maximum and minimum values of the Y axis so as to really exaggerate the differences. Try using 7700 to Now imagine writing an advertisement saying how much slower 1992 was than all the other years. It's not true, of course because the difference isn't that great but advertisers often use this trick to persuade you that their product is better than everybody else's. Of course, the marathon isn't so much about speed as endurance, but it is interesting to see that medals are awarded for the best in each Games, not the best overall. That is why the Olympic Record is such an important part of any sport. Beating the record means that you have beaten all the competitors regardless of which games they competed in. It would be interesting to know if there has been an overall improvement across the years and to do this, you need to plot a different type of graph - a scatter graph. Set the Options > Scale back to Auto and plot a scatter graph of Year against Time in Seconds. Use the technique above to alter the Y-axis and the X-axis to start at The points will be grouped in threes (for the three medals) but it will not be possible to tell if there has been an overall change. To do this you'll need to plot a scatter graph with line of best fit. The computer will calculate the averages and draw a line which you can interpret. 1. Has there been an overall average increase in the speed at which the marathon is run? (think carefully - the line slopes up but is this better or worse?)... Use these techniques to explore other events. Try to find out if there is an overall trend for improvement in other events. 9

11 Activity Sheet 7: Statistics Load a copy of Junior ViewPoint or ViewPoint and open the file Olympics You have probably noticed that the record for each event is shown in words and also as a number (seconds or metres). Each athlete's result is shown in these two forms as well. The reason for this is that, as human beings, we need to see the time or distance in an understandable form. For example, 2 hours, 5 minutes and 38 seconds means something to us (it's a very long time to be running). Computers work best with raw figures. They're not really interested in whether it's a long time or not. They just do the mathematics and they need the result in a numerical form. So 7538 seconds might not mean anything to you and me but to a computer it's a useable number. The computer will happily put a set of numbers in ascending or descending order. It will also add them up, show you the largest and smallest and even calculate the average, all in the blink of an eye. Is it true that men can run faster than women? You can check this by using the Statistics tool. First, switch statistics on by clicking on the Statistics tool. Choose the fields you want in the left hand pane, Click on Time in seconds or you might find it easier to simply select All. In the right hand pane, choose Average. In list view you will see the average(s) at the foot of the column(s). Of course, it is no use at the moment because Junior ViewPoint has averaged all the results from all the events. Select all the sheets for women's 100 metres and you will see the average for this one event. Event Women s 100 metres Men s 100 metres Women s 1,500 metres Men s 1,500 metres Women s 10,000 metres Men s 10,000 metres Average Time Complete the table below. 1. So, do men run faster than women?... You can also have fun with statistics. For example, if you select all the long jump entries, you'll see that although their average jump was 7.73 metres, altogether they jumped metres! This means that you can now give interesting facts to people. For example, "did you know that if all the Olympic medallists in the long jump made one giant leap, they would travel over 278 metres?" You might also like to measure 278 metres and see how far it it. Try these: 2. How high in the air would all the gold medal high jump athletes rise? How far would all the men together throw a javelin? How far would all the women together throw a discus?... 10

12 Answers to the Activity Sheets Activity Sheet 1 Q.1. Men Q.2. United States of America Q.3. Los Angeles Q.4. Sydney Q metres Activity Sheet 2 Q.1. Silver Q.2. Wilson Kipketer Q metres men Q.4. Sydney Q.5. Year Event Gold medal winner Country Women s 200 metres Barbel Eckert-Wockel Germany Men s 10,000 metres Alberto Cova Italy Men s javelin Jan Zelezny Czech Republic Women s marathon Naoko Takahashi Japan Q.6. Sara Simeoni Q.7. Sebastian Coe Q metres Q.9. Gail Devers Q.10. 2hours, 26 minutes, 05 seconds Q rd Apr 78, Ethiopia Activity Sheet 3 Q Q Q.3. 5 Q metres, discus, high jump, javelin 11

13 Answers to the Activity Sheets Activity Sheet 4 Q.1. Country Medal Won Event Won Athletes Name Burundi Gold Men s 5,000 metres Venuste Niyongabo Colombia Bronze Women s 400 metres Ximena Restrepo Gaviria Denmark Silver Men s 800 metres Wilson Kipketer Djibouti Bronze Men s Marathon Hussein Ahmed Salah Ivory Coast Silver Men s 400 metres Gabriel Tiacoh Khazakstan Gold Women s 110 metres hurdles Olga Shishigina New Zeland Bronze Women s Marathon Lorraine Mary Moller Q.2. Country Total medals Best Olympic Games Best event(s) No. of medals for this event Germany , Seoul Men s Discus 6 Great Britain , Los Angeles Men s 1,500 metres 5 Russia , Moscow Women s 1,500 metres 6 United States of America , Los Angeles Men s High Jump 12 Q.3. United States of America. Q , Los Angeles Q medals Activity Sheet 5 Q.1. Men Q.2. Women Q.3. Women's javelin, men's 1500 metres Q.4. Atlanta Q Q Activity Sheet 6 Event Athletes Medals Women s javelin Men s 1,500 metres Tessa Sanderson Fatima Whitbread Sebastian Coe Stephen Cram Gold Bronze Gold Silver Q.1. No. The line slopes up which means that the time taken is increasing on average. In other words the runners are running more slowly. Activity Sheet 7 Event Average Time Women s 100 metres Men s 100 metres Women s 1,500 metres Men s 1,500 metres Women s 10,000 metres Men s 10,000 metres Q.1. Yes Q metres Q metres Q.4. 1, metres 11

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