In order to find the graph, we (my group and I) needed to first see the patterns that each graph had. We did this by first joining the results together and then scanning each result for any subtle anomalies where factors may have been changed. We then looked at the Y axis, as the X axis contained only the year and would have not really helped much with finding out which sport each graph was. The Y axis, however, played the biggest part in finding out which sport the graph was, as it had different units each. By looking at these units, we were able to find the sport, as each unit was unique to its own graph. We had some trouble, especially with the track events, as we were unsure of the units being minutes or hours. However, after looking at each possibilities and closely analyzing the patterns, we were able to separate and group the field events from the track events, as the field events had a positive colleration with the year, as athletes grew stronger in throwing and jumping events, whilst track events, which was the running ones, had negative colleration with the passing year as athletes grow faster and faster. This narrowed our search for answers down and made it easier to find which sport each graph had. The rest of the task was simple, as it was a matter of height or length, which would both be in meters for the field events and time for the track events. Some of the graphs though, had massive give-aways, such as Graph 1’s Y axis ending at about 14, which is the average time of an athlete’s 100m Sprint and the last record held being about 9-10 seconds, which is the record held by Usain Bolt, and this gave us assistance in getting the answers. Other factors that helped include the time of the sport’s introduction, like Graph 8 which starts in the 1980s, which hinted at the obvious sport participated by women, as women only started participating somewhere in the 1900s.
The results are as follows, with the format being Graph number, sport name and then record holder:
1- 100m Sprint- Usain Bolt
2- Men’s Long Jump- Bob Beamon
3- Women’s 1500m- Paula Ivan
4- Men’s High Jump- Charles Austin
5- Men’s Javelin- Andreas Thorkildsen
6- Women’s High Jump- Yelena Slesarenko
7- Men’s Decathlon- Roman Serble
8- Women’s 10,000m- Tirunesh Dibaba
9- Men’s 4X100 Relay- Nesta Carter, Michael Frater, Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell
10- Women’s 100m- Florence Griffith Joyner
There were also some anomalies that have not been mentioned above as there had been no grammatically correct space to place them in, but I will not forget to mention them. Multiple anomalies are found in both graphs 5 and 7, and a gap in all the graphs in the 1940s. The gap found in all of the graphs is due to World War II, which did not allow for the Olympics to take place, and thus left a gap over at the centre of the graphs, but as for the anomalies, they are completely different reasons. The anomaly in graph 5 was due to a design change in the Javelin, forcing athletes to use a different technique in the throw and thus resetting the records, and the two anomalies in graph 7 was due to the fact that each decathlon has different events and that the point scoring system was changed multiple times. These then helped us find the results as well as a few other factors, such as the women’s sport being introduced only in the early 1900s as mentioned above. Such factors are the key that assisted us in achieving our goals of finding which sport fits which graphs.