The World’s Fastest Men

Is there a pattern to the times for the gold medalists in the men’s 100 meter run from past Olympics? If there is a pattern can you predict the winning time for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing?

You’ll need to make a scatter plot to see if there is a pattern in the relationship between the year of the Olympics and the gold medal winning time. This scatterplot is easily created by hand.

Let X represent the years.

What will your domain be?

Let Y represent the time of the 100 m dash.

What will your range be?

The World's Fastest Men and Women Steps Year Name Time(sec) 1. Draw your axis and determine the 1886 , 12 increments for each axis. Use the 1900 Francis W. Jarvis, United States 10.8 whole piece of paper. 1904 , United States 11 2. Develop the scatter plot 1908 Rogmald Walker, South Africa 10.8 3. Draw in your line of best fit. 1912 Ralph Craid, United States 10.8 4. Pick two points which are easy to 1920 Charles Paddock, United States 10.8 read and on your line of best fit. 1924 , Great Britain 10.6 Use those two point to find the 1928 Percy Williams, Canada 10.8 slope of your line. 1932 , United States 10.3 5. Use another point on your line of 1936 Jessie Owen, United States 10.3 best fit. Substitute your slope and rd 1948 , United States 10.3 the 3 point into the point-slope 1952 , United States 10.4 form of an equation of a line. 1956 , United States 10.5 6. Clean up your equation of your line 1960 , Germany 10.2 and write it in slope-intercept from 1964 , United States 10 7. Use your equation to find the 1968 , United States 9.9 prediction for gold medal time for 1972 Valeri Borzov, USSR 10.14 the Beijing (2008) & (2012) 1976 , Trinidad 10.06 Olympics for the Men’s 100m dash. 1980 , Great Britain 10.25 8. Investigate on the internet the gold 1984 , United States 9.99 medal time for the Beijing & London 1988 Carl Lewis, United States 9.92 Olympics.