Urgent Math IA help

Hi so I have to come up with an idea for a Math IA by next week. I do Math SL.

I have a few Ideas:

Doing something on card counting blackjack. I have looked into this and there are a number of things I could do on probability. However I'm not sure if that is enough math or complicated enough.

An interesting idea I got from my teacher was to count the number of letters in each word in an article in a newspaper and create frequency distributions. I could look at the distributions for different newspapers (e.g. tabloids/broadsheets) or different languages. Then I should explore mathematical functions that could be used to model the frequency distribution.

Finally my third idea would be to do something on tennis. I could either explore projectile motion or I would look at the longest official tennis match which was between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. I would then explore what the probability was that the match took over 11 hours.

I want to receive the best possible IA grade and I'm unsure which Idea is best suited. Also I would welcome any suggestions on variations of my ideas or ways to make them more complex. Currently I'm somewhat worried about filling 6-12 pages with the help of math.

Reply 1

Bujjeys

Hi Ben,

I'm in Math HL this year, so I'm not entirely sure about the level of complexity expected from your IA, and I can't decide for you, but here is how I would approach each idea.

Anything involving card games in a Math IA seems like it would either be too complex and involve a fair amount of psychoanalysis or would be too simple.

The distribution frequency of letters in a newspaper or the like should (assuming a large enough sample size) follow Pareto's law, so bear in mind that quite a lot of research has already been done on this and you would only be reiterating whatever conclusion you draw.

Projectile motion is definitely physics, and the probability of the duration of tennis matches seems like something very hard to operationalise.

I'm not saying all of these potential topics are dead ends, these are just the negative aspects I think you should weigh out.