Footballers, fans and commentators use percentages all the time in football. Brush up on your own percentages skills with this short video presented by Gary Lineker from ‘Match of the Day’ and Ben Shires from CBBC ‘Kickabout’.
Make sure you have a pen/pencil and paper ready so you can calculate the answers - you have 30 seconds to answer each question.
GARY: Football is full of numbers, 11 against 11, 4-4-2, goal tallies, so, next time you watch a football match, look out for the hidden maths.
Let's go over now to the ‘Kickabout’ studio to see what today's Maths Of The Day topic is.
BEN: Thanks, Gary.
Today's Maths Of The Day topic is Pitch Percentages.
So, what is a percentage?
Think of any measurement or object split into 100 equal bits.
Each bit is 1% - or 1/100 - of the whole thing.
So when footballers say, 'I gave it 110% out there,' they're saying, 'I did the impossible,' because they gave it everything they had and then some more.
Back to you in the studio, Gary.
GARY: Thanks, Ben. Let's see how good you are with percentages.
Your star striker scores 30 goals in a season.
You need to use percentages to work out how many of each goal type they scored.
Question one - if 50% of the goals were simple tap-ins, how many goals was that?
Ok, so that's 50/100, or half.
They scored 30 goals in total and half of 30 is 15.
So the striker scored 15 tap-ins.
Question two - 20% of the striker's goals were headers, so how many goals is that?
We would write that as 20/100, which is the same as one fifth. One fifth of 30 is six, so they scored six goals from headers.
10% were penalties, so how many times did the striker fool the keeper?
10% is the same as one tenth, and one tenth of 30 is three.
So they scored three goals from penalties.
Question four - if the rest of the goals are from free kicks, how many is that?
No need for percentages, here - just add up the first three answers.
15 + 6 + 3 = 24. Take that away from 30.
Six goals were from free kicks.
That's all from me for now.
Keep practising and you'll soon be 100% successful.
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