I recently came out with my regular-level statistics course, and an important question is being asked: What is the difference? In this post, I want to break down the difference between AP Statistics and regular-level high school statistics.
Note: The opinions I have here are my own and from my own experiences. You might have different ones, and I would love to hear about them!
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- Regular-level statistics covers the Common Core Math standards while AP Statistics covers the college board course and exam description
- Regular-level statistics can be semester-long courses or year-long courses, while AP Statistics is equivalent to a first year, algebra based, college statistics class.
- Regular-level statistics courses provide more freedom in pacing, while in AP Statistics, students are preparing for the AP Exam at the beginning of May, and are therefore on a fixed pacing schedule.
- Students can earn college credit if they pass the AP Exam in AP Statistics, while a regular-level class will teach them almost the same information without college credit.
Is there a big difference in content? The standards provided for statistics are very broad and you can incorporate a lot of additional topics and discussions into the course, while in AP Statistics, the content and requirements are set. Here are the differences I have between my two curriculums:
What I teach in my regular-level, semester long class, but not in AP Statistics:
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- Misleading Graphs (while I have a project on it in AP Statistics, I teach a lesson discussing it in my regular-level class)
- How to determine if a distribution is approximately normal
- Correlation is not causation (again, this is discussed in AP Statistics, but there is more of an emphasis in my lesson)
- Ethics in experiments (it is an optional, briefly talked about subject in AP Statistics)
- Permutations and combinations
- Continuous Random Variable Distributions (the ones that require Geometry to solve)
- The Poisson Distribution
What I teach in my AP Statistics class, but not in regular-level class:
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- The units that would typically be in a year-long regular statistics course are not in my semester-long course: sampling distributions, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, and non-linear regression
- Normal probability plots
- Mosaic plots
- Residual plots
- Matched pairs experimental design
- Lurking vs confounding variables
- Combining random variables
If you are making the decision to include a regular-level statistics course or an AP Statistics course at your school, I think the biggest question you have to answer is “what do your students need?”
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- Do they need a college-prep class that will potentially earn them college credit in high school?
- Do they want to be exposed to college-level rigor while gaining fundamental statistics knowledge?
- Are they motivated and determined enough to handle an advanced workload?
If you answered “yes” to these questions, AP Statistics might be a good fit for your school!
If you answered “no”, consider the following questions:
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- Do your students need and want exposure to the data and statistics in the world around us?
- Do your students require a flexible pacing schedule and the freedom to incorporate additional activities?
- Are not all your students on the traditional college credit pathway, but still want advanced content?
If you answered “yes” to these questions, Statistics might be a good fit for your school!
Statistics has the flexibility to be a single semester course (we pair it with a single semester financial algebra course) or a full year course. My curriculum is a single semester course, but a full year course would include everything in my curriculum, plus some units on inference (sampling distributions, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, etc.).
If you have any additional questions, or want to add your voice to this conversation, please leave a comment below! I would love to hear from you.