Running to Conclusions

This is a picture of track athletes competing in an event. One of the marquee and most followed events in track is the running of the mile.

The following is a plot of world record times for the mile.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, a hot topic in track and field was when someone would be the first person to run a sub (below) 4 minute mile.

From looking at the graph, think about the following questions:

In what year was the first sub 4 minute mile ran?
How much faster is the most recent world record than the earliest?
Do the data points suggest that a straight-line would be a reasonable fit to the data?

Let's see what this might look like. To see the plot, click on Straight-Line Graph of Mile Record Holders.