Teaching Math Using the Olympics

The New York Times Learning Network has put together a great collection of ideas to help teachers of all disciplines bring the Sochi Winter Olympics into the classroom.  I contributed to the math section.

For example, using this beautiful infographic showing the medal counts by country for all previous winter olympics, students can explore how countries perform when they host the games.

Use the medal counts to investigate the Olympic “home field advantage.” For each country that has hosted the winter Olympics, calculate the average number of medals it wins when hosting the games and when it does not. Do the host nations tend to win more medals? Do they win more gold medals in particular?

There are many other great ideas for teaching math, science and health here.  A separate set of ideas covering history, geography, and social studies can be found here.