For my lesson I would have students get data from http://www.gbrathletics.com/olympic/skating.htm . We would then make a scatterplot of the data for the 1500m or the 5000m in Excel. We might do both men and women and look at the trends in the data (women are improving more than men) and look at the outliers (1932). We could also extrapolate (2010) and interpolate (1944). This math would be a quick review of 7th grade. In a month or so, students will be ready to make a line of best fit through this data and write a linear equation (y=mx+b) for it. This they would do by hand, as the goal is for them to be able to do these calculations themselves.

Tracy- This looks like agreat lesson. I like the way it pulls together several different math skills. I also think that the students would find this to be interesting and relevant. It could start a great discussion about why women would be improving more than men. Very interesting! I'm going to pass this on to the math teacher on my team!

I noticed that the period at the end of the URL is interferring with opening the page. To get to the olympic data, try this
http://www.gbrathletics.com/olympic/skating.htm