Algebra I students start out solving one-step equations. A good application is finding a baseball player's batting average. The batting average is the ratio of hits to official at-bats. An at-bat that is not "official" would refer to getting on base by means other than your batting ability. Being walked or being hit by a pitch is not counted. Batting average is expressed as a decimal rounded to thousandths place. A person getting one hit in four at-bats is hitting 0.250, pronounced "two fifty". A person going two for three is batting 0.667, pronounced "six sixty-seven". Do not get mathematically correct and pronounce this "six hundred sixty-seven thousandths". Expect blank stares or ridicule if you do. Incidentally, when baseball people are talking about Ted Williams being the last person to hit four hundred, they mean the last person to have his hit to at-bat ratio being greater than or equal to 0.400.
Since baseball's regular season just ended a couple days ago, let's take some batting averages from the last season.
Miguel Cabrerra won the American League batting title by having 145 hits in 429 at-bats. Students could use the formula BA = H/A to get his batting average (.338). Or, given his batting average was .338 and he was at bat 429 times, how many hits did he get? Or, Cabrerra was had a batting average of .338 with 145 hits. How many times was he up to bat? This also leads to an opportunity to talk about round off error as the last question could be answered by saying he was up to bat 428.99 times.
The National league batting title was won by Dee Gordon, having a .333 average by having 205 hits in 615 at-bats. He edged out Bryce Harper who was 172 for 521 for a .330 average. Actually, going into the final day of the season, they were tied. Each had a .331 batting average. OK, not exactly tied. Harper had an average of .33075 and Gordon was at .33061. On the final day of the season, Gordon was 3 for 4 and Harper was 1 for 4, giving Gordon the title.
Leaving out some information and being creative, a person could probably come up with a number of algebra problems from that scenario.
