Olympics data investigation
Bring the excitement of the Paris Olympics 2024 to your maths lessons with this Olympic data investigation worksheet. Featuring Olympic medal data and a range of data representation and analysis tasks, it’s a fun way to practise data skills with KS3 and KS4.
What’s included
This engaging worksheet features data on the Olympic medals won by the top 10 countries, plus a choice of 5 data tasks offering varying levels of difficulty and challenge.
Olympic maths activities
Students can choose from one of the following tasks, or work through them all!
- The Skilled Statistician — Create a bar graph showing the total medal count for the top 10 nations.
- The Mean Machine — Work out the mean number of medals won by each nation per Summer Olympics, to two decimal places.
- The Medal Ratio Master — Calculate gold, silver, and bronze medal ratios for the top 5 nations and create pie charts for the top 3.
- Master of Medal Progression — Analyse medal progression for USA and China, then calculate average medals won per Olympics and infer from it.
- The Prediction Pro — Predict medal counts for the next Summer Olympics based on current data.
How to use this worksheet for an Olympics maths lesson
A choice of 5 different activities means that tasks can be differentiated for students’ needs and also target particular skills. Assign tasks, let students choose or have students work through all tasks depending on the needs and abilities of your class.
Encourage students to represent data visually, by creating bar charts or deepen students’ understanding of ratios by calculating Olympic medal ratios and representing them with pie charts. Students can practice their data analysis and inference skills by calculating mean numbers of medals and analysing trends in medal progression. Students are also challenged to apply their understanding of the data by making predictions about future Olympics.
Throughout the lesson, have students share their findings and predictions to promote discussion around data analysis.
