How Statistics Have Affected My Life.
Statistics has affected my life in so many ways that it would be impossible to even list all of these ways. So, I"m just going to pick a few statistics that I believe were a pretty big influence on my life. The first one that comes to my mind is the statistics involved in baseball. I played this wonderful game for twelve years of my life and statistics helped me know which areas of the game I was succeeding in and which areas of the game I needed improvement on. The most common statistic in baseball is of course the batting average. This statistic is important to all baseball players because it portrays your performance as a hitter and without good hitters the game would have no scoring. The batting average is calculated by taking the number of at bats you have and dividing it by the number of hits you have during those at bats. I was able to keep my batting average around .450 (or 45%) all the way through high school. This was important because if I had not been able to perform this well I would have been cut from the team and missed out on the sport I love so much. Other statistics in baseball include slugging percentage, ERA (earned run average), and on-base percentage.
Another statistic that has affected my life in a significant way my scoring percentages on the national merit test. As you know, the University of Oklahoma prides itself in the number of national merits it receives. I unfortunately was unable to become a national merit because I was only in the 97 percentile range. To become national merit I believe you have to be in the 99 percentile range. This has had a negative affect on my life in a couple of ways. First of all I didn't get the prestigious title of national merit scholar. Second of all I didn't get near the kind of scholarships I would have gotten if I had been able to achieve this status. Because of this I have to work during my collegiate career to help pay for college.