Where in the world?

I'm not sure whether this would be a fun problem or not. I definitely think it falls into the "doing math" category when it comes to that math task categorization taxonomy.

Lots of famous cities have those signs with lots of arrows pointing in different directions with distances to famous cities. My math problem idea: show a picture and ask "Where in the world is this?" I'd want kids to figure out what to do from there, and to use the power of the internet and Google maps to go crazy.

I also found this sign that gives times instead of distances. Definitely an added level of challenge.

To me, this is a problem about loci and intersections of loci, so I can imagine asking a follow up question about how much information from the sign is actually needed to figure out where you are. In theory, this could get pretty interesting because you're working on a sphere instead of a cartesian plane.

Here's why I have questions about this activity:
-How do you find a picture of a sign that's not too easy to google?
-Just by typing in "___ kilometers from Moscow" how quickly will kids find their answer?
-Does a sign with obscure cities (like a road sign on the freeway) make the task more interesting or less interesting? More challenging or less challenging?
-Which is really all to say: how much math is in this task? What math is it?

Also: in searching for a good picture to add to this post, I found a 3D Signpost App. This feels like it has more potential. I especially like this screen:

It feels like there's lots of potential for kids to make their own versions of the screens from this app. And if there's some crossover with a geography or world history class or something, even better. 

Could you be an Olympian?

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/datablog/2012/aug/07/olympics-2012-athletes-age-weight-height

The Guardian has stats on height, weight, and age across athletes in the 2012 Olympics. Some questions I would want kids to ask/investigate:

• For your height/weight/age what sport are you most likely to play. That is, for what sport are you most "normal"? 
• I don't know if I'd include age depending on how old my kids are. If I mostly had 14 year olds, it would be tough because most athletes are older. But it would probably be fine for 17 year olds
• I might also leave out weight because that's a touchy subject, but maybe I'd give kids the choice. 
• It would be interesting to see how kids combined all three variables
• If you played ___, what percentile would you be in for height/weight/age? (I think this would require the assumption that the variables are normally distributed)
• Some kind of comparison of shape, center, spread across sports. Which sport has the longest window of time where you can reasonably play (we could discuss whether this referred to range or standard deviation)? For which sports is mean a better measure of center and vice versa? 
• For which sport are athletes the most different from the general American population

What's best is that all the data is available in a spreadsheet, so you can do whatever you want with it