Math Through Sports
Made and missed: fractions in football
5 min · A fraction is the part that happened out of everything that was tried.
- Fractions
The stat
A fraction is the part that happened out of everything that was tried.
Learn the number
Passes caught
Passes thrown
A fraction has two numbers. The bottom is how many tries there were. The top is how many of those tries worked.
A quarterback throws the ball. Some passes are caught. Some are not. If he throws 24 passes and 18 are caught, we write that as 18/24.
The bottom number never means "the good ones". It always means "all of them".
Read the stat
A quarterback completes 18 of 24 passes.
- All the tries go on the bottom: 24.
- The ones that worked go on top: 18.
- That is the fraction 18/24.
- Both numbers can be divided by 6: 18 ÷ 6 = 3, and 24 ÷ 6 = 4.
18/24 is the same as 3/4. Three out of every four passes were caught.
Your turn
A running back is handed the ball 10 times and gains yards on 7 of them. Write that as a fraction, then simplify it if you can.
Explain what it means
3/4 tells you what usually happened, not what happens next. The very next pass is still one pass — it can fall incomplete and the fraction is still true.
Make a prediction
Before the next game, write down how many of the next 4 passes you think will be caught. If 3/4 of passes are usually caught, 3 is a sensible guess.
Review what happened
After the game, check. If only 2 of 4 were caught, that is not a broken fraction — 4 passes is a very small number of tries.
Check your understanding
0 of 3 correct
Every question has to be right for this lesson to count as complete. Miss one and you can try it again.