Playing Dirty

Data is often kept about rules violations in sports games such as fouls in basketball, flags in football or penalty box minutes in hockey. Examining this data can provide insight into each sport. In this problem, you will examine some aspect of sporting rules violations using scatter plots, best fit lines, residuals and/or correlation coefficients to answer questions. You may choose to examine number of penalties (like number of flags thrown against a football team), severity of penalties (like penalty yards assessed against a football team), or another rules violation of your choice.

Before researching data, do you think the number of penalties a team gets in a season is correlated to the number of wins the team gets in that season? Do you think it is a positive or negative relationship? Do you think the relationship is weak or strong? Explain your reasoning.

I believe that the number of penalties a team gets in a season affects the number of wins due to if they get so many penalties that can get disqualified which can cause them to lose. I think its a positive relationship and a weak relationship because its different everytime.

Is there a relationship between the number of penalties a team gets in a season and the number of wins in that season? Show any mathematical work that leads to your answer.

Do penalties cause a change in wins or wins cause a change in penalties or neither? Explain your reasoning.

Record two new questions for the data that you research that are similar to questions (2) and (3), then answer these questions using mathematics.