Butterfly Swimming
By: Nasser M.
Butterfly Stroke
The Butterfly stroke is swum on the breast side, with both arms moving simultaneously, accompanied by the butterfly kick (aka the "dolphin kick"). While there are other swimming strokes such as the breaststroke and front crawl, the butterfly one more difficult to perform. The butterfly stroke is harder to be performed by beginners because it requires a lot of practice, technique, and physical strength. The Butterfly stroke is one of the newest types of swimming created as well as competed, and it originated from the breaststroke. The person who holds the world record and has won the past Olympic swimming events is Michael Phelps.
Why?
I chose Butterfly swimming because it's a fairly new competitive sport and I find it very interesting because of the techniques it requires.
The Goal of the Study
I'm trying to find out when the women will swim at a faster time than men. I'm gonna have to use linear equations, graphs, and a calculator in order to determine the year that women will beat man and the amount of time they take.
Data
This is the Men's and Women's Gold medalist times from year 1976-1988
More Data
This is the men and women's gold medalist times from year 1992-2004
More Data
This is the men's and women's gold medalist times from year 2008-2012
The Scatter Plot
The pink squares represent the female competitors and the black X's represent the male competitors.
The Linear Regression (Lines of Best Fit)
Each line represents the slope/trend of the female and male gold medalist time. The red line represents the female competitors and the blue line represents the male competitors.
Crossroads
The Red line represents the rate at which women's gold medalist time is moving and its speed. The blue line represents the rate at which men's gold medalist time is moving and its speed.. Y2 represents the slope for women's gold medalist. Y1 represents the slope for men's gold medalist.
The Intersection Point
The intersection point means when the female competitors will beat the men and what time they will get on the 100 meter butterfly. The intersection point is made up of two coordinates the x and the y coordinate. Each coordinate says a different thing about the intersection point. According to the graph, the women will reach a faster time than the men in the year 2661 and their time will be approximately- 20 seconds, but since there is no Olympics in 2661 it will be in 2664 and the time that women gold medalist will beat the man is approximately -19.7 seconds. We know that if it is going to take 600 years and the time is going to be negative as shown above, the women's gold medalist will never beat the men's gold medalist because it's impossible to butterfly stroke 100m in -20 seconds. In fact it's impossible to do anything in negative amount of seconds.
The X-Coordinate
The x coordinate (x=2661) states the year in which either the women gold medalist will beat the male gold medalist. For my analysis this gives me the year that the Olympics will take place, but it can give a year in which there won't be an Olympics as shown above, so I will have to give the Olympic year that comes after the year the x coordinate gives, if it isn't an Olympic year already. (For ex: 2661 is not an Olympic year, so I will have to go to 2664)
The Y-Coordinate
The Y coordinate (Y= -20) gives an exact time in seconds that the women's gold medalist will beat the men's gold medalist. The y coordinate gives an exact time in seconds and if that's over 60 you will have to convert to minutes. For my analysis i can give an approximate number of the time that the women gold medalist will reach. My Y-coordinate was -20, so that is the time the women's gold medalist will reach, but we know it is impossible to butterfly stroke 100m in -20 seconds. Thus meaning that the women's gold medalist will never beat the men's gold medalist.