Mathematics is very apparent in wider society and in real life situations because as humans, we use mathematics in many different capacities whether it functions our lives or is essential in our careers.
Football is one of the most popular sports in the world with millions of people watching and playing the sport on a weekly basis. The rise of television coverage has had a big impact of the popularity with over 212 territories over the world watching the Barclays Premier League meaning over 4.7 billion people are watching live football weekly (Premier League, 2016). Furthermore, millions of youngsters are idolising all these talented footballers for playing the sport but many people do not realise how mathematical driven the sport is and how mathematics is used all the time in football.
Firstly, the size of an everyday eleven-a-side football pitch has themes of measurement and geometry by the sizes of the six-yard and eighteen-yard boxes, centre circle in the middle of the pitch and the quarter-circles in the corners of the pitch. This demonstrates that football uses metres, yards and inches to measure out the pitches correctly. As well the pitch uses shapes such as rectangles and circles to identify important parts on the pitch. Lastly a football goal also has aspects of geometry as the frame of the goal is rectangular and the tessellation of squares are used to make up the goal netting (SportsKnowHow, no date).
In addition to that, all footballs are made of leather or from a similar material with the shape always being spherical. In a regular eleven-a-side game, it consists eleven players against eleven players with substitutes taken place at different points of a ninety minute game (2×45 minutes). All the players on the pitch will have different shirt or jersey numbers which represents different numbers, for example, 1 for goalkeeper, 9 for centre forward and 11 for left midfielder. To end, data analysis is used to gesture scores and goals to create league tables which have meaning in the long term, for example, winning the league or relegated to the league below.
References
Premier League. (2016) The world’s most watched league. Available at: http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/about/the-worlds-most-watched-league.html [Accessed on 27th March 2016].
SportsKnowHow. (no date) Soccer dimensions. Available at: http://www.sportsknowhow.com/soccer/dimensions/soccer-dimensions.html [Accessed on 27th March 2016].
