About the Cover

If you like to read the sports page, you know that math is an integral part of sports because statistics is used to summarize and compare data sets. But there's more math than that! The soccer field is composed of rectangles and circles. Even the soccer ball is covered with pentagons and hexagons. Maybe most importantly, the speed of the goalie as she makes a save can be described by an algebraic function. You'll learn more about geometry in Chapter 6 and functions in Chapters 9 and 10.