MarioKart Math!

posted Jun 29, 2017, 9:40 AM by Patrick Johnson
Image result for mario kart 8

During the last week of school, students got to play Mario Kart 8 in order to collect data for a math challenge. Each student got to race in a time trial. The character, vehicle and track were all of the same (we discussed the importance of keeping the variables the same). Students raced 3 laps and the fastest time was recorded. Students rounded their time to the nearest second (which led to a lesson in rounding decimals).

Afterwards, students worked in partners to complete the following challenge:

Students first used paper and calculators to complete the task. Students discovered that all the races combined totaled 882 seconds or about 15 minutes. We discussed the challenges of adding large groups of numbers using a calculator. This led us to a lesson on adding numbers using Google Sheets. Students also discovered that we could use Google Sheets to order the numbers from greatest to smallest (or smallest to greatest).

Below, students found the mode was: 58, 54, 52, 51 and 46

Finally we used our data in Google Sheets to generate a graph of our data. We discussed the scale and the advantages of seeing the information visually.