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These resources have been reviewed and selected by STEM Learning’s team of education specialists for factual accuracy and relevance to teaching STEM subjects in UK schools.

100m Sprint

In this activity students examine the Olympic 100m winning times from 1928 to 2012. Both men's and women's times show an improvement. The challenge is how to show that there is an improving trend and to show which times show the most improvement. Scatter graphs, regression and the Least Squares Regression Line are used. Autograph files are provided to help to illustrate the processes.

100m Sprint:Teacher Guidance provides a general overview of the resource. It suggest that prior knowledge should include scatter graphs and interpreting lines of best fit. There are also ideas for extension activities.

100m Sprint: Activity Sheet provides detailed guidance to the teacher. Page one shows the data which is available to the students. Page two has some specific questions followed by possible responses and ideas for the next steps. Page three raises the issues of interpolation and extrapolation. There is also a list of the contents of the Autograph files in the graphs folder.

100m Sprint: Information Sheet. This sheet shows the Olympic 100m times as shown in the Excel spreadsheet. It also has specific questions to enable students to understand the context of the problem and be able to make a start.

100m Sprint times 1928-2012: this spreadsheet shows the winning times for men's and women's 100m Olympic finals.

Graphs: this folder contains six Autograph files, mainly relating to men's Olympic 100m times. See page three of the 100m activity sheet for more detailed descriptions of the files.

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