Up the middle, up the middle, up the middle, punt

[sigma7]

RALEIGH, N.C. - The state's test writers tried to come up with a math question about football and ended up with a fumble.

On an end-of-grade test this month, seventh-graders had to calculate the average gain for a team on the game's first six plays. But the team did not gain 10 yards on the first four plays and would have lost possession before a fifth and sixth play.

The team opened with a 6-yard loss, a 3-yard gain and a 2-yard loss, which would have made it fourth down with 15 yards to go for a first down. The team's fourth play was just a 7-yard gain, yet it maintained possession for a 12-yard gain and a 4-yard gain on two additional plays.

"Whoever wrote it didn't think it through," said Gene Daniels, athletics director of Salem Middle School in Apex.

Mildred Bazemore, chief of the state Department of Public Instruction's test development section, said the question makes sense mathematically and was reviewed thoroughly.

"It has nothing to do with football," Bazemore said. "It has to do with the mathematical concepts that you're studying."

Okay, Kansas may not understand exactly what constitutes science and religion, but we do know what fourth down means, Mildred. And if it "has nothing to do with football," maybe you shouldn't have put it on the sacred gridiron in the first place.

Oh, how I hate people.

Comments

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Clearly the problem was inspired by this game (which shows that the Big 8 ain't too great with this sort of thing either. Besides, if you're writing this sort of question in NC, you want to have it show how UNC-CH comes back from 8 points down with only 17 seconds left to Duke to win in overtime...before the three-point shot was allowed. Dammit, NC is basketball country.)

"No. 72 - You always go for it on fifth down.
Colorado 33 Missouri 31 October 6, 1990
A good Colorado team, ranked No. 12 in the country, was going into Missouri for just another Big 8 conference game against a relatively bad Missouri team. Little did everyone know that the controversy that would ensue would only grow as the season went on. Down 31-27 with 31 seconds to play, the Buffaloes had the ball first and goal on the Missouri three. Quarterback Charles Johnson spiked the ball to stop the clock. Second down: Running back Eric Bieniemy, who ran for 217 yards on the day, barreled down to the one. Colorado called time out with 18 seconds to go. On third down, Bieniemy was stuffed. The officials stopped the clock with eight seconds to go saying Missouri wasnt unpiling fast enough. Fourth down: Johnson spiked the ball again to stop the clock. Why? The down marker said third down as they failed to flip it after second down. Soooooo.Fifth down: With two seconds to play Johnson forced it in from the one, getting in by just the nose of the ball, if at all, for the winning touchdown. The officials didnt signal for a touchdown and the fans rushed the field even tearing down one of the goalposts. When an official signaled touchdown, a riot erupted on the field. After Missouri tried to change the outcome, they were informed that, under NCAA rules, it couldn't. "

[http://users.livejournal.com/_redpanda_/]

Actually, I have no idea what a "down" is nor what it means that there's four of them...

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Neither, I think, does Mildred. (I'm going to try to explain this, but feel free to ignore me if it's nonsensical, as it doesn't necessarily apply or matter that much.)

The gist of possession in football is you have four attempts -- "downs" -- to move the ball ten yards down the field, toward your goal. If you cross that ten-yard threshold, you get a new set of downs, starting over from the first, and a new ten-yard threshold.

If, after the fourth down, you don't get past that threshold, the other team gets the ball at the spot where your team had it. This is, typically, Not Good, as it means they don't have far to go before they score. If you have zero to little chance of getting all the yards you need on fourth down, you punt -- kick the ball as far into enemy territory as you can, so they have further to go when they're bringing the ball back up the opposite direction.

For example: on first and ten, if you go nine yards, then the next play is second and one. If you go four yards, then the next play will be a new first and ten.

(Penalties/goal line ignored for simplicity's sake.)

To get extremely nit-picky and a bit defensive of a woman who should be heading up the short list of possible Oakland Raiders coaching slots, Mildred was correct inasmuch as that possession doesn't affect the average of the possessions themselves: "The team opened with a 6-yard loss, a 3-yard gain and a 2-yard loss, which would have made it fourth down with 15 yards to go for a first down. The team's fourth play was just a 7-yard gain, yet it maintained possession for a 12-yard gain and a 4-yard gain on two additional plays." That's -6, 3, -2, 7, 12 and 4. That's a total of 18 yards in 6 plays, or an average of 3 yards a carry.

But if the question failed to address the fact that the rules wouldn't have allowed six consecutive possessions (without penalties) in that sequence, that's an oversight of a badly-constructed word problem from someone who apparently doesn't care about possible ambiguity or lack of clarity. But switching the third and fifth possessions -- the -2 and the 12 -- would eliminate the whole problem.

Someone got lazy and, worse, invoked football without taking it seriously. Science and religion do mix on the gridiron. I would cast the heretics out and into pits of sulphur and brimstone, but they're crafting standardized tests for grade school children, so maybe that would be redundant.

(Note: I'm not honestly indignant about the outrage. Just a trifle pedantic, as I can be when "educators" are in denial about their own ignorance.)

if only you knew....

[robing.livejournal.com]

I find this amusing for reasons I am not allowed to explain.