COMMENTARY: The Joys of Scorecards
The key to helping kids learn math, think critically, and understand the world around them isn't found in an educational program, but a baseball program.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Early SOL results are beginning to roll out, along with the predictable defense of low scores, promises of programs to come that will yield better results, celebrations of high achievement, and an endless stream of speakers at school board meetings citing this reading number or that math number to support whatever story people wish to tell.
Our understanding of education and whether it’s working has been severely undermined over the past quarter century not by data itself, but by our inability to understand it.
Numbers, the adage goes, don’t lie. It’s also true, however, that numbers on their own are relatively meaningless.
Take one number - $350,000. On its own, it’s just a number. Attached to a simple question, like: Is that too much to pay for a house?, and the number gains context and meaning. But one still can’t answer the question intelligently without more information. What’s the borrower’s income? What have surrounding houses sold for? Does it carry the amenities the buyer wants? What are the commuting costs for the buyer from home to work? How are the area schools? Is the housing market rising or falling?
We’re good at cherry-picking numbers to fit a pre-ordained belief. We’re lousy at using numbers as a tool to unlock the deeper truths they rest upon.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to help the upcoming generation to better understand data, while having fun doing it.
Score a baseball game.
Converting Reality to Symbols
At higher levels of math, numbers begin to disappear, replaced by symbols (∞, π, and more).
Even for advanced students, understanding how such symbols function can be challenging. Part of the problem? Being able to conceptualize what the symbol represents.
Scoring baseball is all about using symbols to stand in for the reality on the field.
K = Strikeout
Backwards K = Strikeout Looking
- = Single
Two hyphens stacked on top of one another = double
Three hyphens stacked on top of one another = triple
It’s a simple shorthand that can grow quite complex, depending up the system one uses.
For younger folks, it helps them to find the connection between symbol and meaning.
Basic Formulae; the Good and the Bad
Baseball gives itself to stats like no other sport. That’s because everything in baseball is counted.
Parents can start small: RBI (Runs Batted In); BA (Batting average); ERA (Earned Run Average).
These common stats can tell you a fair bit about a player. Take BA. In baseball, a hitter with a .300 BA is considered an excellent batter. It’s calculated by dividing total hits by the total number at bats.
It’s a useful number, but it only tells part of the story. Because it doesn’t take into account walks, or hit by pitches, or intentional walks.
For that, you need OBP (On Base Percentage). So, divide total hits (including hits, walks, and a batter being hit by pitch) by total at-bats.
Even this stat can be refined, however with the SLG, or Slugging percentage. The formula is a bit more complex, but not too hard to understand:
This captures not only how often batters get on base, but how often they collect more than one base at a time.
The highest SLG of all time? .6897 by Babe Ruth.
Teaching kids to gradually learn more complex formulae, they learn not only math skills, but a more-nuanced understanding of what numbers can tell you.
Storytelling
Scoring games improves story telling in ways.
First, to be a good storyteller (or good writer), one must learn to pay attention to the details in the world around them. To score properly, one must be playing very close attention to what is happening, and be able to equally quickly translate it into numbers and symbols.
Collect enough data, and one can begin to calibrate BA, SLG, OBR, and so much more.
Second, keeping scorecards allows one to go back at any time and replay in one’s mind any game ever played and scored. The more-detailed the scorecard, the more nuanced the story it tells.
Third, because there are numerous systems for scoring games, one begins to appreciate that even the best ways of reporting data have strengths and shortcomings.
Attention/Communication
Scoring a game is not easy. It requires focus, knowledge, and attention to detail. And like any skill, it takes time to develop the necessary stamina to do it well.
At a time when data has become a pass from slowing down and really taking in the world, what a wonderful way to teach someone that collecting data is an art in itself.
As important, it encourages communication with those around oneself. No one can see everything (another good lesson in data collection), so you build rapport with those nearby to fill in the gaps.
Home Run
Collecting data on baseball, like collecting data on students, is a powerful tool for helping one understand the complex environment one lives in. It’s also a reminder that data — even the best data — is a mere shadow of the world it records.
Learning that lesson can help people not only appreciate the complexity and beauty of the world around them, but the limits of data in telling any human story.
It’s a lesson kids need to learn. It’s a lesson that parents and too many adults have forgotten when discussing education and its strengths and weaknesses.
This summer, go to the ballpark, keep score, and teach some valuable skills. (Just don’t let the youngsters’ know they’re learning.)
It’s an equation for a home run every time.
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