Maths on the Go: 101 Fun Ways to Play with Maths by Rob Eastaway & Mike Askew

Author:Rob Eastaway & Mike Askew [Askew, Rob Eastaway & Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Square Peg

50

What’s the Score?

Work out the score before the TV tells you

Helps with: Quick addition.

There are lots of occasions when scores pop up on television. In sport, there are scores for football, tennis, gymnastics, cricket and rugby (to name but a few), and in many talent shows such as Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing on Ice the judges’ marks are totted up to give an overall score.

A simple challenge when watching with your child is to work out the score before it flashes on the screen. The four judges hold up their marks: Six! Six! Seven! Seven! Quick, what’s the total?

In football keeping up the score is pretty trivial – only one goal is scored at a time, so the score 1-1 will change to 2-1. But in rugby where more points are on offer, the challenge is more interesting. Wales leads France by 14 points to 10 and they then score a try. What’s the score now? You get 5 points for a try, 14 + 5 = 19, so the score is now 19-10. What would France need to get back level? They need 9 points. It’s 3 points for a penalty, so three penalties would do it. And a converted try (7 points) plus a penalty (3 points) would be enough to put them ahead.

You can do some intelligent guessing, too, and see who gets closest. ‘I think Celebrity X is going to get 31 points in Strictly, what do you think?’ ‘What do you reckon the full-time score in this match is going to be?’

Another routine calculation in football matches is to work out how many minutes are left in the game. With 73 minutes gone, you can casually ask, ‘We need an equaliser, how long is there still to play?’ Subtracting 73 from 90 is good mental arithmetic. And there’s always injury time to calculate as well.

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