Free-throw

**Broad Question**
What gender makes the most foul shots?

Specific Question
Does gender affect the percentage of foul shots made?

Hypothesis
It is hypothesized that the male gender will have a higher shooting percentage. Based off my research, this seems like the most rational answer. The average for the top five boys that go to the Ohio State high school is 93.48%, while the top five girls that go to the Ohio State high school is 92.88%. Boys tend to have more patience and stamina, girls like to rush things, saying this based off of experience, is why girls tend to have a lower shooting percentage than boys. See the graph below.

**Independent Variable**: Gender

 * Dependent Variable**: Baskets made - shooting percentage

Variables That Need To Be Controlled:

 * Same basketball hoop
 * Same basketball
 * Same Instructions

Potential Problems And Solutions
Some potential problems could be things such as, not being able to use the gym, and not being able to have the participants for my experiment be there on the day that the trials are run. Some things to fix that would be to go talk to the physical education teacher to make sure that there is a day that I can use the gym, and for my participants, I would make sure to get them to run the trials in the morning before school has begun.

Safety Or Environmental Concerns
Based on my plan, there will be no safety or environmental concerns.

Experimental Design
(add the correct headings from the experimental design pagebefore beginning) The experimenter will be seeing if gender can affect the amount of foul shots made. There will be five boys, and five girls. The first boy will be asked to stand at the foul line and take his 10 foul shots, which will be recorded on separate piece of paper. The experimenter will then ask the first girl to stand at the foul line and repeat the actions. The data will be collected on a score sheet. The experimenter will write the five boys’ and five girls’ names on the paper, with the numbers 1 -10 written beside their name for the total of shots. The experimenter will then circle the amount of shots made.

** __Item Name: Size: Quantity: Description:__ **
1. Basketball 28.5 1 Spalding Top-Flite 1000

2. Canon EOS Rebel T3 12.2 MP CMOS Digital Camera

3. School gym 1 During the day before school starts

**Detailed Procedure:**
1. Make 20 permission slips to give out. 2. Gather all of the slips by February 4. 3.The participants will be put into groups of one boy and one girl for the free throw shooting. 4.Take two people every morning to the gym between 9:00 and 9:15/9:20 to take their free throws 5.Set up a Canon EOS Rebel T3 12.2 MP CMOS Digital Camera to take pictures of the experiment, and use Flip camera on tripod for videos 6.There will be a picture taken of the two people used for the experiment during the time to shoot 7.They will each be given a basketball that is recommended for boys 12-14 and girls 12 and up to use. 8.The first time up, the boy will go and take his five shots at the foul line into the basketball hoop.  <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">9.The girl will be rebounding for the boy <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">10.The experimenter will tally down his score out of 10. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">11.For the second set of shots, the girl will go first. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">12.The girl will take her five shots. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">13.The boy will be rebounding for the girl <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">14. Each time there is a new group, the gender will keep alternating with each pair. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">14.The experimenter will tally down her score of of 10. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">15.There will be a new pair that will go take their 10 shots every morning, this will be repeated for eight more mornings. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">16.Steps 9 - 14 will be repeated with every pair. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">17.The experimenter will add up all of the shots taken by each gender and will write them down to see who had the most out of 100. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">18.The scientist will find the average of the shots and then she will put them into a percentage.

All Raw Data
(data table)

Graphs




Results (paragraph about data and table have for information)
<span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The experimenter found that the hypothesis was not correct. The average shooting percentage for the boys was 23% out of 100%, and the girls average shooting percentage was 26% out of 100%. Though it was not much of a difference, the girls had proved the experimenter wrong.

Conclusion
<span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The experiment was designed to show if gender would affect the amount of foul shots made. The results showed that the girls had the higher amount of shots made. The girls had made a total of eight shots altogether, and the boys made a total of seven shots altogether.

Discussion
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The experiment was to test and see if gender would affect the percentage of foul shots made. The results of the experiment do not answer the question because there was not enough data collected to determine if gender did affect the percentage of shots made. It was hypothesized that the male gender would have a higher shooting percentage. The hypothesis was not supported by the results of the experiment. The female gender made the higher percentage. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The experiment was designed using a regulation free throw line. Each of the three trials included one male, and one female shooting 10 free throws. The first trial, was a set of two seventh grade students. The male scored 4 out of 10 shots, which was the highest amount of shots in the experiment for boys and girls. The female scored 2 out of 10 shots, which was the lowest amount of shots made for the girls. The second trial was an eighth grade male, and a seventh grade female. The male scored 1 out of 10, which was the lowest amount of shots for the experiment, and for both genders. The female, made 3 out of 10 which was now the highest percent made for the girls. The final trial, was two seventh grade students. The male had made 2 out of 10, and the female made 3 out of 10. The last two girls, were tied for the highest amount of shots made in the experiment for the girls. Only the first boy had made the closest amount to 10. With only six subjects in the experiment, and a range of three, this made it unstable due to the lack of participants in the experiment. Based on this, the results showed that the female gender had the higher percentage of shots with 26%, and the males with only 23%. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> During the experiment, there was a trend with the shooting style of the females. They shot without using proper form. According to <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">__Breakthrough Basketball,__ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the proper shooting technique includes “eyes on target, stance and balance, shot pocket, grip, balance hand, delivery, up force and landing, follow through, and correct shot.” During the free throw shots, it was observed that all three females did not have stance and balance, grip, balance hand, and the delivery. The first subject used had all of the correct technique. It is inferred that the subject in trial one did not take as much time needed to make the higher percentage of shots. The one skill that was observed in this subject, was follow through, which was not observed in any of the other five subjects. The other two male subjects, exhibited almost the same exact technique as the three female subjects. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The independent variable in this experiment was the gender of subject shooting foul shots. The dependent variable measured in this experiment was percentage of shots made. The relationship between the two variables in this experiment was weak. A couple of the reasons of this weak relationship may be, the set of data was too small having only six subjects. Another reason this data may not have shown a strong relationship was the lack of experience in the subjects. According to research by Ohio State high school, the males scored 93.48%, and the high school females made 92.88%. This showed that the male gender would make the greater percentage, which was the opposite of what was shown in this experiment. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Conducting this experiment in a middle school environment was shown to be difficult. One problem that was encountered was availability of gym time, and availability of students. Another issue was the level of experience within the subjects. On the middle school basketball team these subjects played for, there were 25 out of 60 students. The experimenter took only students who had played on one of these teams to experiment on. The amount of students that play on a team is 41%. That is less than half of the total number of students in the middle school. These subjects, only play during the basketball season at their school, which leads to lack of experience. This makes it hard for the subjects to improve on their skills, and being able to learn better techniques. In the future, using subjects that were affiliated with travel teams instead of only middle school basketball players, would increase the reliability of the data, making it able to better answer the researched question. If the experimenter had used more subjects and had run each each trial with at least 20 shots instead of 10, would have created more data to compare. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> While conducting this experiment, the only technological device that was used, was a camera. Other than a Canon EOS Rebel T3 12.2 MP CMOS Digital Camera, no other technology was used. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> This experiment, could be useful to any basketball coach looking to create a experienced basketball team. Research shows that the male gender usually makes a higher percentage of shots. Using this information at the recreational level, will help the directors make a well balanced team. A coach would not put a team of higher male percentage shooters against a team of females with a lower shooting percentage. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> This experiment was conducted to test if gender affected the percent of foul shots made. In the future as more and more experiments are conducted, the female gender could possibly grow in experience, changing the results to more closely match the data collected in this experiment.

Benefit to Community and/or Science
In this experiment, there was no benefit to the community and/or science.

Background Research
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**1) What is the average height and weight of boys and girls that are 14-15?** (I honestly don’t think that these seem right based on the 14 year old boys and girls I know)
 * The average height and weight of a 14 year old girl is 5’3” - 5’4” and 105-115 lbs.
 * The average height and weight of a 14 year old boy is 5’3” - 5’6” and 105-125 lbs.


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2) What are basketballs made out of? **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">*” <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #414141; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Modern basketballs still have a rubber bladder, which is often wrapped in layers of fiber. This is then covered in rubber or a synthetic composite designed to provide better grip and feel along with moisture absorbency. Leather is still used in some cases and is still used in some professional leagues. The outer layer still contains a number of panels with “ribs,” but they are no longer stitched together.” **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">*The distance between the hoop and the foul line is about 15 feet for both teams
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">3) What is the distance from the hoop to the foul line for both NBA and WNBA? **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">*” <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">high school players should shoot over 70%. I, personally, don't think that anyone over 15 years of age (or high school age) who shoots below 70% is a good free throw shooter. I think that, if you shoot below 70%, you should look seriously at making some adjustments, whether it is in form, routine, or thought process.”
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">4) What is the average free throw shooting percentage in high school basketball? **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">* 10 ft.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">5) How tall is the hoop from the ground at the school? **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Source: Vance Pickering - Gym teacher **

**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">6) How far is the free throw line at the school? ** <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">* 15 ft.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Source: Vance Pickering - Gym teacher **

**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">7) What is the average weight and diameter of a basketball for boys and girls that are 14? ** <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">*” <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0e2233; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Size 6: circumference 28.5 to 29 inches, weight 20 ounces, recommended for boys and 12-14 and girls and women age 12 and up. This is the official game ball for women's high school, university and professional basketball. It has a diameter of 9.07 to 9.23 inches and a radius of 4.54 to 4.62 inches.”

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">* The average for boys is 93.48% (Only used the top five boys)
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">8) What is the average shooting percentage for high school boys? **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">* The average for girls is 92.88% (Only used the top five girls)
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">9) What is the average shooting percentage for high school girls? **

**10) What is the correct technique for shooting a foul shot?** *
 * 1) Eyes on Target
 * 2) Stance and Balance
 * 3) Shot Pocket
 * 4) Grip
 * 5) Balance Hand
 * 6) Delivery
 * 7) Upforce and Landing
 * 8) Follow Through
 * 9) Correct Shot

[] [] [] [|http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/fundamentals/foulshooting.html#ixzz2Iq6NLXaY] []
 * References**

[|http://www.ohsaa.org/sports/records/gbkrecrd.htm#FTPS]
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/fundamentals/shooting-technique.html

Abstract (What was the question? How I set it up? What were my main results? What was the answer to the question? How can the information be used? 1 or 2 sentences for each.)
<span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The experimenter measured if gender can affect the amount of foul shots made. It was hypothesized that the male gender would make the higher percentage. The experiment was conducted by having three girls and three boys shoot ten foul shots. Their shots were recorded. The end result was that the female gender had a higher percentage with 26% and the males had 23%. This did not answer the question due to the lack of subjects.