What is the behavior of the curves during the week?
B
Which curve is above the other? When does it occur?
C
Consider an external factor that could affect the bowlers.
A
See solution.
B
Most of the Season: Bowler B End of the Season: Bowler A
C
See solution.
Practice makes perfect
We are given a graph showing the average scores of two bowlers from the start of a season to the end of the season.
We want to describe each bowler's performance. To do so, let's analyze each curve one at a time.
Bowler A
The line segment that represents Bowler A starts at a lower point than the line segment of Bowler B. After that, it increases faster and faster through the week. This means that the Bowler A was not good at the start of the season, but became continued to improve during the time span.
Bowler B
At the beginning of the season, Bowler B performed better than Bowler A. However, after a certain amount of time, Bowler B's average score increased less and less until the end of the season. That trend occurred as Bowler A's average score increased during the same time frame.
We want to know which of the bowlers had a higher average score for most of the season. Notice that Bowler B's performance curve is above the performance curve of Bowler A for most of the season. Since the vertical axis indicates the average score, Bowler B had a higher average score for most of the season.
At the end of the season, we can see that Bowler A's curve is above Bowler B's curve. Therefore, Bowler A had a higher average score at the end of the season.
From the given graph, we can see that Bowler A's curve had a very high increase in rate. This can be due to a great game plan or a certain technique applied at the start of the season.
The performance of Bowler B at the start of the season had a very slow growth rate and eventually their average score growth seems to be flattening. This could be due to an injury, for example. On the other hand, Bowler A drastically improved their average score. The reason can be, for example, that their skills improved greatly, or simply got off to a bad start.
