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Teach AP Statistics Next Year!
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by John F. Mahoney
Benjamin Banneker Academic High School
Washington, District of Columbia
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An Appeal from an AP Statistics Novice
AP Statistics is a relatively new AP course. The first exam was given in 1997, when 7,667 students took the exam. In 2002, over 49,000 students took the exam; the number is increasing at a rate of 20 percent each year. Many high schools, however, are not yet offering the course. The purpose of this article is to convince you, a high school mathematics teacher, to teach AP Statistics next year.
Which Students Should Take AP Statistics?
According to the College Board's Course Description for AP Statistics, "the AP Statistics course is an excellent option for any secondary school student who has successfully completed a second-year course in algebra and who possesses sufficient mathematical maturity and quantitative reasoning ability." This statement contrasts with the statement in the AP Calculus Course Description: "Before studying calculus, all students should complete four years of secondary mathematics designed for college-bound students: courses in which they study algebra, geometry, trigonometry, analytic geometry, and elementary functions."
Students, therefore, can take AP Statistics instead of pre-calculus or in addition to it. The Course Description says, "For students who would otherwise take no mathematics in their senior year, AP Statistics allows them to continue to develop their quantitative skills." AP Statistics is equivalent to a semester-long statistics course at most colleges, while AB Calculus is often equivalent to a yearlong course in college. With less material to learn and less rigor, AP Statistics can be easier to learn than AB Calculus. And therefore, it can be easier to teach AP Statistics than AB Calculus.
Why Aren't You Teaching AP Statistics?
You might feel uncomfortable teaching statistics because you didn't take it in college or, if you did, perhaps you had a less than successful experience with it. But consider: NCTM's Principles and Standards for School Mathematics includes data analysis and probability among its five content standards. In fact, the list of expectations for all students in grades 9-12 in this area would match the curriculum of the first semester of an excellent and comprehensive AP Statistics course! I would be thrilled if my AP Statistics students had mastered these expectations by the end of the first semester. Relatively little additional work needs to be done to prepare students for the AP Exam beyond these NCTM expectations.
Why Should You Teach AP Statistics?
There are two main reasons. First, students can do well in this course, they can grow to enjoy it, and they will find many ways to apply it in other disciplines. They will benefit from learning statistics well in a high school environment. This course is not designed just for the math "whizzes," but for students who have been successful in Algebra 2. Therefore, it is designed for almost all college-bound students.
Second, you should teach AP Statistics because you can. If we expect students to learn a year's worth of mathematics in a year, then surely with help you, an experienced math teacher, can learn enough statistics over a summer in order to teach the course in the fall.
AP Statistics can help students complete their high school math education feeling empowered about math and good about their experience. Too often, students become weeded out of courses as they proceed through the high school curriculum. The calculus "track" filters some students out and these students may leave high school feeling less than comfortable with their experience in mathematics. They wonder whether they will ever use what they have learned -- the quadratic formula, equations of parabolas and ellipses, trigonometric identities, etc.
For almost 20 years, the calculus reform movement has been trying to turn calculus into a "pump, not a filter," but it has not yet been fully successful. Statistics, on the other hand, is eminently applicable. There are examples of the use and misuse of statistics every day in the news and in ads. Students can go through AP Statistics without ever using the quadratic formula or memorizing a statistics formula. The exam in AP Statistics provides three pages of formulas, so students do not have to memorize them. Students do, on the other hand, need to know when to apply the formulas and, most important, how to interpret the results. Graphing calculators make the computations in statistics relatively easy. The AP Exam, however, does not emphasize computations -- it emphasizes understanding and interpretation. The course plays to the strengths of students who can express themselves with words. Is a statistical study well designed? Are the results significant? The AP problems are interesting -- and relevant. It really is easy to convince students that they will use what they are learning in AP Statistics during their college and professional years.
How I Started Teaching AP Statistics
I am in my third year teaching mathematics at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, which is an inner-city public high school in the District of Columbia. An article last year in the Washington Post noted the "...predatory crime of the surrounding neighborhood" and went on to point out that "more than one-third of Banneker students are poor enough to qualify for federal lunch subsidies. About 94 percent of the students are African American. It may be the highest performing public school in the country with such a demographic profile." In June 2003, Banneker was named number 49 in Newsweek's list of America's Best High Schools.
After 29 years teaching in private schools, I knew that I had to be open to many changes when I started teaching in a public school. In my first year at Banneker, my two pre-calculus classes did not go well. Many of the students, primarily seniors, had not developed good algebra skills and I spent most of the year teaching them the topics from Algebra 2 that they needed to master in order to understand pre-calculus and calculus. The students were motivated and willing to work, but were often handicapped by their earlier difficulties with mathematics. Worse, they were graduating without a sense of confidence about their ability to understand math. I decided to push for a change and persuaded the school to start offering AP Statistics. Four months later, I was teaching 60 students (including over half of the senior class) in the course. In three sections of this course, I was able to make mathematics interesting by relating it to the lives of the students. We focused on problems and examples that they could relate to. Students designed surveys and analyzed them. They worked on statistical projects in small groups and presented their results to the class. Many of these projects involved the students' community service work in their neighborhoods. The course combined the student's verbal, writing, and math skills. I encouraged the students to argue in class and to back up their arguments with good statistics.
Despite getting a BS and MA in mathematics, I had never taken a course in statistics. While I had taught units in probability over the years, I had never taught any statistics units. I am quite experienced as an AP Calculus teacher and have long been a Reader at the AP Calculus Reading. Nonetheless, I only had a perfunctory understanding of the AP Statistics course. I jumped into the course and have not regretted it at all.
I, and many other AP teachers, use past AP problems and similar ones from AP review books as a source of problems for my quizzes, tests, and projects. In teaching the course, my role is that of a coach. I'm working with my students to prepare them for the big game -- the AP Exam in May. We, the students and I, are working together on a common cause. The students have the potential of getting college credit for their results on the AP Exam and they can use their enrollment in the course to aid in their college admissions process.
I advocate opening enrollment for AP Statistics to any student who has passed Algebra 2 and therefore I do not give a qualifying exam. This is consonant with the College Board's policy on equity and access: "All students deserve an opportunity to participate in rigorous and academically challenging courses and programs." I do not worry too much about AP Exam scores. For me, the course is like a marathon race. The vast majority of runners in a marathon race do not expect to win -- the key is to finish. Finishing the race is like getting a 3 on the AP Exam. Winning is like getting a 5, which is much harder in AP Statistics than in AB Calculus. To me, working together in class is key. I involve the students in group projects and sometimes involve them in grading and evaluating each other's work.
What My Students Have to Say
Following are several quotes from my students:
"Although AP Statistics is demanding, I signed up for it because I would like to major in business. After many months of learning statistics, I realized that I truly enjoy the course. The best part about the course is that it showed me what it would be like if I were to major in business."
"AP Statistics deals with why you have the answer. I often find myself confused in the class because I usually like finding an answer without ever thinking why or how I came up with it. So, overall AP Statistics has been a difficult but good experience. It has been a good experience because it has taught me to think more about things and not to just take things as they are."
"I can honestly say that of the 32 classes that I have taken during my schooling at Benjamin Banneker High School, AP Statistics has been one of the most practically applicable courses. Compared to my experiences in Algebra 2 and pre-calculus, statistics has been, for the most part, much simpler, perhaps due to its realistic relevancy. Also because of relevancy, I would say that I enjoyed this class as a whole more than the previous two."
"I would fully encourage others to take this course. It requires dedication and hard work, but is definitely worth it."
"Taking an AP class is really a lot of work especially when you are set on learning and getting good grades. The most frustrating part of learning AP Statistics for me has been the fact that this is a math course like no other. By second [marking period] I had become annoyed at the fact that I had no opportunity to plug in for "x" or even "y"! The abstract math ideas of causation and constantly pretending to have a simple random sample were really getting on my nerves. My dreams of using that wonderful pre-calculus and honors Algebra 2 were crushed and my brain was on the verge of being fried. What kept me going was the teacher. He made it worth learning for me, really. He was creative when it came to teaching us some of the hardest aspects of statistics. The textbook used was very relevant: there were real life examples like women's heights in comparison to men's heights. My favorite was the Gallup study on whether or not going to church makes people live longer. Come to think of it, if I could rename this math class I would call it 'Philosophical Math.'"
"This is the only math class that I have managed to do well in and be able to understand and explain to others with ease."
"I truly enjoy learning statistics. I am always engaged during class because no matter what the concept is, I can relate it to an issue or topic in everyday life. I think that this is truly a senior course because it allows a breath of fresh air. More than likely, in the eleventh grade, you are taking required and sometimes uninteresting courses. Once you reach your senior year, you are ready to learn something vital to life experiences and fun for everyone. That's statistics."
"One of the most rewarding experiences is when I finally grasp the concepts and methods for myself.... I love the feeling, more so in math, when I understand a topic so well that I can explain it to someone else, especially when they are struggling to understand -- a position that I have found myself in plenty of times. I feel like I have truly helped someone when 'the light bulb' clicks on and his or her eyes become bright. I guess that is how teachers feel."
Conclusion
It is clear from the NCTM's Principles and Standards that all high school students should learn a considerable amount of what is in the AP Statistics Course Description. It is relatively easy for you to extend these expectations in order to prepare students for the AP Statistics Exam. There are considerable resources available to help you teach this course. Do it. Try it. Then, maybe you will echo similar sentiments as those of the last student, who savored the dual accomplishment of not only learning, but of teaching.
Resources
There is a considerable amount of support available for beginning AP Statistics teachers. Two publications, in particular, are essential: the AP Statistics Course Description and the Teacher's Guide -- AP Statistics. Both publications are available from the College Board Store.
AP Central. This site contains the Course Description, past exams, syllabi for textbooks, teachers' resource center, and articles such as this one.
The AP Statistics Electronic Discussion Group (EDG) offers readers the opportunity to read discussions on a variety of statistics topics, to ask questions, and to respond to questions from others.
AP Institutes & Workshops. The College Board sponsors many one-day and multi-day workshops on AP Statistics throughout the year. Other organizations also sponsor them.
Publisher's Web sites and Supplemental Materials. Most publishers have a dynamic Web site. The publisher of the text I use has a site that features online quizzes. My students take these quizzes at the end of each chapter. They can take the quiz any number of times -- and I just count their highest score. The supplemental materials for this text include a CD-ROM containing a test bank. This allows me to construct an extensive variety of quizzes and tests. There is also an AP Exam preparation guide and a solution manual to the text.
Statistics Software. Since I do not have a site license for software at my school and I only have a 15-inch computer monitor in my classroom, my students do not have access to statistics software in school. At home, though, I prepare examples using Fathom, a dynamic statistics software program, and Minitab.
Calculators. My students and I use the TI-83+ family of calculators. The statistics commands of this calculator are easy to use and easy to remember. The key, though, is that the exam emphasizes explanations over computations.
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