April is Mathematics Awareness Month, and this year members of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics selected “Mathematics and Sports” as the theme. This theme highlights the intersection of the sports world with the wide world of mathematics—a universal language that is used to investigate problems ranging from the athletic to the cosmic.

Sports offers a multitude of instances and situations involving data, strategies, and chance, each of which is perfectly suited to mathematical analysis. Beyond the obvious uses of mathematics for rating baseball players and football quarterbacks, mathematics is used to design the dimple patterns on golf balls and the composition of racing tires; it is used for schedule tournaments and rank teams; and it is used to determine tactics and to predict the ultimate limits in sports records.

In the 1960s the ABC television network began a popular weekly series called “The Wide World of Sports,” which spanned the globe to show the tremendous variety of sports. The 2010 Mathematics Awareness web site has articles about baseball, basketball, football, golf, soccer, track and field, tennis, and car racing as well as videos and links to other resources. Click here to download articles and essays as well as an 8 1/2 x 11 inch copy of any of the four 2010 posters.

To order the four 2010 Mathematics Awareness Month posters, call the MAA Customer Service Center at (800) 331-1622; fax your request to (301) 206-9789; or send an email to maaservice@maa.org.