BSHS Mathematics

Problem Solving and Modelling Task (PSMT)

Planning and Feedback Document

Name: Teacher:

Student Teacher

FORMULATE Introduction
• What is the problem you are solving?

The Wall Sit Challenge is a competition designed to improve physical

tness in the whole school. This challenge consists of three events,
the rst being a whole class endurance where the entire class holds
the wall sit. The next is the random draw where one student is
chosen at a time from each team to compete in a wall sit. The nal
event is beat the mean where the whole class holds a wall sit
together and the mean time is calculated. Each event, teams earn or
decrease in points. The team with the most points wins the challenge.
The coach’s job is to decide which randomly selected 3 squads of
students will enter events. They may not enter 2 squads into the
same event.

Observations
• States three relevant observations.
• Explain why you have included them.

1.
• The classes have di erent number of participants
• Ibis has the highest and lowest numbers
• Cockatoo has a lot of high numbers
• Vulture looks like it has the most spread out data

2.

3.
SOLVE Assumptions
Explain key steps of your
• State three necessary assumptions.
working throughout your
solution. • Explain why they are necessary.

1.

• The surface in which the wall sit was conducted were

the same for everyone
• The technique for each wall sit was the same
• The timer was stopped and started at the right time
2.
• The squadrons will be able to replicate the same time
they did in the test
These all help to ensure the data is accurate

3.

Outline the Maths

• What steps are you going to follow to come up with your
answer?
• Why are you using this maths and not anything else?
• Include any formulas that you will use.
The task is for the coach is to nd the best event for the 3 squadrons
allocated to him by using central tendency and spread. The rst event is a
whole class endurance competition where when half the class stops
holding the wall sit, the squadron’s time will be recorded. Event 2 is a
random draw competition where one person from each squadron is
selected at random to compete in a wall sit. The last event is called beat
the mean. In event 3, the entire class holds a wall sit together and their
mean time is recorded. For all the events, the squadrons can either earn or
lose points based on how long they hold the wall sit for. The higher the
time, the more points each squadron will earn. The squadron with the most
points wins the competition. These include, mean, median, mode and
range. The mean determines the average time each class did the wall sit
for. The median is to nd out the central value, showing how each data
set’s centre value changes. The mode is to nd the most occurring time
someone did the wall sit for. The range would be to nd out the the lowest
and the highest wall sit times. The mean, median, mode and range will nd
out the central tendency for each class, which will help to nd out what the
best con guration for each assigned squadron would be.

Mean, median, mode range

Determine the relevant statistical summaries of each team.
2
 Outline what data you are going to use to decide which team to
enter into which event.
2
Based on the calculations, squadron Cockatoo should be assigned to event one. Event one is a
competition where when half the people of the squadron have stopped doing the wall sit, the time
of that squadron is recorded. For the best results, the squadron should have a high median as
having a high median means that the time it takes to get to 50% of the people left doing a wall sit
would increase. Squadron Cockatoo had the highest median at 193 seconds compared to
squadron Vulture, and Ibis with a median of 63 and 90.5. They are considerably lower than
squadron Cockatoo, therefore squadron cockatoo would be the best solution for event one as it
has the highest median time. Although squadron cockatoo would be a good t for challenge 3,
beat the mean, it would likely earn more points in the whole class endurance challenge.

For event two, squadron Vulture would be the best t for the challenge. This is because event 2 is
a random draw of one student in each squadron. What this reveals, is that the squadron with the
mode would perform best. This is because it’s the more likely to pick something when it occurs
the most. Squadron vulture has a mode of 180 seconds, occurring multiple times throughout the
dataset. In addition, a higher mode increases chances that it would win the competition as the
challenge is to have the highest wall sit time.

For challenge, 3, Beat the Mean, squadron Ibis would be a good t for it. Challenge 3 beat the
mean is a challenge where the class attempts to have a higher mean time than other squadrons.
The squadron with a high mean would do well in this challenge. Ibis would be a good t as it has a
overall relatively high mean which means its likely to perform well in the challenge.

State which team you will enter into each competition.

2

Justify and Evaluate Justify your method

• List out each step in your PSMT and justify why each of the
steps you stated in your introduction were necessary. 2
Reasonableness of solution
• Why do you think your response is reasonable?
•
2
Would you get a similar response with rough, estimated
calculations?

Strengths
• What other real-world situations could these techniques be

•
useful in?
Why would your decision be better than just randomly
I
allocating each team to a different event?

Limitations
• What possible reasons could there be that your
calculated answer would be different from what happens
in real life? I
• Use the sentence structure, “if assumption one wasn’t
true then…”
 Conclusion: Summarise the final solution of your task.
2

COMMUNICATE Report includes:

• Introduction
•
•
3 sections – formulate, solve, evaluate
Conclusion
2
All calculations are shown, including working and formula, using
correct mathematical symbols and conventions
I
All final answers rounded to 2 decimal places

The original problem posed has been answered

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