Reply to AP Statistics as a 10th grade elective

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "AP Statistics as a 10th grade elective "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can a student take ap stats first, then Ap calculus the following year. Is that doable?[/quote]

Yes, my kid took Precalc and AP Statistics in 10th grade, then AP Calculus BC in 11th grade. However, then you're basically locked in to multivariable calculus for 12th grade.

You do not need calculus for statistics.[/quote]

You do need calculus in statistics for any cumulative distribution function, or continuous probability etc. which is why it’s better to take it with or after calculus. However, the calculus concepts can be explained at a basic level, eg as a limit for summation of discrete probabilities. All the calculations are found in tables or with the help of a graphing calculator, so you won’t do calculus questions by hand. In this respect, for learning statistics at a more superficial level (which is perfectly fine for an introductory class), you do not need calculus.

To OPs question, it is fine to take AP stats in 10th, but don’t underestimate the subtlety and difficulty of the class, I’ve seen many ‘strong’ students getting burned. Also taking it that early means a lot of the concepts are difficult to derive and many results will be taken as given, ie have a formula that needs to be applied. The risk is the student memorizes the formula, but doesn’t really understand the assumptions and context on when to apply, and he might have difficulty on the AP exam, where the questions are actually hard.

When people say Stats is easy, they usually mean the part of plugging in a formula, and of course it’s easy enough to get the standard deviation of a dataset, but in my view this is a very small part of what statistics is about.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics