Every minute, things are happening in a pro basketball game. Points are being scored, fouls are being committed, one player is having a hot streak while another can’t seem to get a shot. The flow of the game is enough for many of the fans. The coaches need to find out more about the game and study tapes and statistics long after the crowd goes home.

Graphing data can be a visible and fairly effortless way to make sense of a long stream of numbers. Although students often think of graphs as “tools of torture” that were invented to torment them, the graph is actually a sophisticated way of letting our eyes find patterns that our brains may overlook.

Here is a set of data. It relates the measured distance of a ball rolling down a long ramp with the time it goes that distance.

Basketball statistics when graphed can tell us how well the team did during a certain time frame that may indicate which players are working well together.

Here is a fictitious graph of a team’s scoring during a full game.

As you can see, the team did not score any points between the 15th minute and the 24th minute. The graph is horizontal. The slope of the line is zero.

After the 24th minute, the team had its best run. We can see this immediately because the slope is steepest in that time range. More points per minute yields a larger slope.

The bar graph lets us know that the 2nd quarter was a disaster. Very few points were scored. It does not give the detail that the minute by minute graph provided, but indicates without too much analysis when the team was strong and when the team was weak.

A graph of Carl Lewis running the 100 meter dash provides us with other worthwhile information that can be garnered from the data list. Carl Lewis’ times are provided on the chart below.

It is customary to plot time on the x-axis. The graph of Carl Lewis’ race then can tell us about his speed. Speed is equal to the change in distance divided by the change in time. We find that the slope of the graph (change in y-values divided by the change in the x-values) and the speed are equivalent.

The slope increases for the first few seconds. We interpret this to mean that Carl Lewis is increasing his speed for the first few seconds. The slope of the graph is relatively constant for the rest of the race indicating that Lewis’ speed was relatively constant for the rest of the race. We can calculate the slope for the last part of the race to determine the average speed during that time interval.

Slope = average speed = (100 m – 40 m)/(10 s – 5 s) = 12 m/s. This is equivalent to almost 27 miles per hour. Carl Lewis can run faster than most people can pedal a bicycle.


Use sports data and a computer spreadsheet program to create graphs of different statistics