Project: Mathematically Prove Your Skills!

There are many sports and games where skills matter and fans can use statistics to determine which players are the best. In baseball, for example, a player's batting average is calculated by the number of hits he has over a given period of time divided by the number of times he was at bat during the same time period. So if Jerry had 25 chances to bat this season and he hit the ball 6 times during those 25 chances, his batting average would be 6/25=0.240, which means that he hits the ball 24% of the time, on average. You can find similar statistics in sports, video games, and other kinds of competitions.

Your goal in this project is to analyze your own skill in a sport or game, then do a bunch of practice, measure your skill again, and analyze your results. You may wish to take this further, developing training programs that isolate specific skills and predict a general percent improvement for those that adhere to them. Once you have completed your analysis, present your results in a way that is both meaningful to you and communicates something to others, such as a blog or video.

The following sections will use some simple examples to demonstrate how you can calculate a player's level of skill. As soon as you feel comfortable with the math, feel free to spin off into analyzing any skill you choose. We can't wait to hear how good you are!

TreeFort Learning is a not-for-profit organization that provides project-based, self-directed learning that is free for all. If you like our work, please consider making a donation on our website.