Real Life Math: Addition
Math in SPORTS AND FITNESS ADDITION
Many aspects of popular sports require the use of addition. For example, some of the best-known records tracked in most sports are found by simply adding one success to another. Records for the most homeruns, the most 3-point shots made, the most touchdown passes completed, and the most major golf tournaments won in a career are nothing more than the result of lengthy addition problems stretched out over an entire career. On the business side of sports are other addition applications,including such routine tasks as calculating the number of fans at a ballgame or the number of hotdogs sold, both of which are found by simply adding one more person or sausage to the running total.
Many sports competitions are scored on the basis of elapsed time, which is found by simply adding fractions of a second to a total until the event ends, at which time the smallest total is determined to be the winning score. In the case of motor sports, racers compete for the chance to start the actual race near the front of the field, and these qualifying attempts are often separated by mere hundredths or even thousandths of a second. Track events such as the decathlon, which requires participants to attempt ten separate events including sprints, jumps, vaults, and throwing events over the course of two grueling days, are scored by adding the tallies from each separate event to determine a final score. In the same way, track team scores are found by adding the scores from each individual event, relay, and field event to determine a total score.
Although the sport of bowling is scored using only addition, this popular game has one of the more unusual scoring systems in modern sports. Bowlers compete in games consisting of ten frames, each of which includes up to two attempts to knock down all ten bowling pins. Depending on a bowler’s performance in one frame, he may be able to add some shots twice, significantly raising his total score. For example, a bowler who knocks down all ten pins in a single roll is awarded a strike, worth ten plus the total of the next two balls bowled in the following frames, while a bowler who knocks down all ten pins in two rolls is scored a spare and receives ten plus the next one ball rolled. Without this scoring system, the maximum bowling score would be earned by bowling ten, tenpoint strikes in a row for a perfect game total of 100. But with bowling’s bonus scoring system, each of the ten frames is potentially worth thirty points to a bowler who bowls a strike followed by two more strikes, creating a maximum possible game score of 300.
While many programs exist to help people lose weight, none is more basic, or less liked, than the straightforward process of counting calories. Calorie counting is based on a simple, immutable principle of physics: if a human body consumes more calories than it burns, it will store the excess calories as fat, and will become heavier. For this reason, most weight loss plans address, at least to
some degree, the number of calories being consumed. A calorie is a measure of energy, and 3,500 calories are required to produce one pound of body weight. Using simple addition, it becomes clear that eating an extra 500 calories per day will add up to 3,500 calories, or one pound gained, per week.
While this use of addition allows one to calculate the waistline impact of an additional dessert or several soft drinks, a similar process defines the amount of exercise required to lose this same amount of weight. For example, over the course of a week, a man might engage in a variety of physical activities, including an hour of vigorous tennis, an hour of slow jogging, one hour of swimming,and one hour officiating a basketball game. Each of these activities burns calories at a different rate. Using a chart of calorie burn rates, we determine that tennis burns 563 calories per hour, jogging burns 493 calories per hour, swimming burns 704 calories per hour, and officiating a basketball game burns 512. Adding these values up we find that the man has exercised enough to burn a total of 2,272 calories over the course of the week. Depending on how many calories he consumes, this may be adequate to maintain his weight. However if he isconsuming an extra 3,500 calories per week, he will need to burn an additional 1,228 calories to avoid storing these extra calories as fat. Over the course of a year, this excess of 1,228 calories will eventually add up to a net gain of more than 63,000 calories, or a weight gain of more than 18 pounds.
While healthy activities help prolong life, the same result can be achieved by reducing unhealthy activities. Cigarette smoking is one of the more common behaviors believed to reduce life expectancy. While most smokers believe they would be healthier if they quit, and cigarette companies openly admit the dangers of their product, placing a health value or cost on a single cigarette can be difficult. A recent study published in the British Medical Journal tried to estimate the actual cost, in terms of reduced life expectancy, of each cigarette smoked. While this calculation is admittedly crude, the study concluded that each cigarette smoked reduces average life-span by eleven minutes, meaning that a smoker who puffs through all 20 cigarettes in a typical pack can simply add up the minutes to find that he has reduced his life expectancy by 220 minutes, or almost four hours. Simple addition also tells him that his pack-a-day habit is costing him 110 hours of life for each month he continues, or about four and one-half days of life lost for each month of smoking. When added up over a lifetime, the study concluded that smokers typically die more than six years earlier than non-smokers, a result of adding up the seemingly small effects of each individual cigarette.
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oyun oyna…
There were two Quacks in the house, the one behind the podium and the one on the ringtone…..