The MDM4U
Project
Emma Bromley
Erdit Celo
Katherine Fletcher
Henry Guardado
Lizzy Velasquez
MDM4U class of Tom Steinke
Mother Teresa High School
Ottawa Catholic District School Board
Why We Chose to Take the Data
Management Course
• Its not like regular math: its interactive and very
hands-on.
• Its very applicable to real life, unlike many other
math courses. For example, surveys and data
presented on the news make a lot more sense after
taking this course.
• You can use it in almost any career, from teaching
to biochemistry!
The Project
• This course was centered around one main project
that encompassed all aspects of the MDM4U
course.
• We were surprised to hear that we could explore
any topic we chose. This does not happen often in
math classes!
• However, it was difficult to choose and focus on
only one topic.
How We Picked a Topic
• We brainstormed ideas and considered different
topics.
• We looked for data on all our topics, and found
that there was plenty available for sports and
ethnicity.
• We looked for trends in our data, and found plenty
of questions to explore.
Our Topic: Sports and Ethnicity
• Sports bring us all
together
• All over the world people
of different ethnicities and
backgrounds unite to play
sports.
• Sports are the only thing
we can all agree on.
However…
…sports are not entirely unaffected
by ethnic differences
Hypothesis
• We believe that there will be definite ethnic
trends in the world of professional sports.
• These trends will be reflected in the high
school population.
Hypothesis cont.
• We believe that African Americans and North
Americans will be the most involved in
sports.
Data Collection: Professional Data
• There was no data set available comparing
ethnicity and athletic achievement.
• We had to create our own data using
information from NHL.com, NBA.com etc.
Data Collection: High School Data
• We picked 50 high school boys at random.
• We asked these questions:
 What ethnicity are you?
 What sport do you enjoy playing the most?
 Are you involved in any after school sports?
 If yes, how many hours do you spend a week
playing sports? (To the nearest hour)
 What sport do you enjoy watching the most?
The Process
• We each picked a different sport to analyze,
so that one person did not have too much
work.
• Each group member explored different
questions that were specific to their own
sports, but we still had several unifying
questions.
• Since we had a bigger group (5 people) we
could thoroughly analyze 5 major sports.
The Process
• After collecting our data, we explored the numbers
for interesting trends.
• We compared the actual numbers to the current
stereotypes concerning sports and ethnicity.
• After we each did our separate parts, we got
together to combine them all.
• This was the hardest part!
Conclusion
• We really enjoyed the MDM4U culminating task
because it was a different type of math project
that we had never experienced.
• We enjoyed working together in our group because
it really helped us understand the concepts of
data.
• We liked being able to choose our own topic of
study and being able to explore it in our own way.