Continuing from last week's math application, we know that a player's batting average is found by dividing his hits by his times up to bat.
There was just a news article how Jon Lester, a fine pitcher, but poor hitter for the Cubs has started the season at 0 for 59. In batting average talk this is not called "zero", but .000. This is a record to start things off this badly.
Of those getting up to the plate over three hundred times, the record is Dean Chance at .066. Another poor batter was Fred Gladding who went one for 63.
Students might have heard that Ted Williams was the last to "hit four hundred". This means during that particular season (1941) his batting average was over .400. He was 185 for 456 which is .406.
Students will have heard of "batting a thousand". This means a hit every time at bat, which is mathematically actually batting "one", but it is written as 1.000 and in baseball it is called batting one thousand.
Here is batting average problem with a system of equations. You start rooting for a player that mid season has a batting average of .312. From that point you keep track and he goes 40 for 100 and ends the season with a batting average of .341. How many hits and at-bats did he have when he was hitting .312?
x/y = .312 and (x+40)/(y+100) = .341.
Even rounding off to thousandths place there will be some round off error and final answers may need to be adjusted a bit. Obviously, at-bats and hits will have to be whole numbers.
