4 ms·

AP Statistics has existed since 1996 and my high school (and many others) offered it as a path for students in addition to the calculus path. That is, you could

AP Statistics has existed since 1996 and my high school (and many others) offered it as a path for students in addition to the calculus path. That is, you could head down the statistics path or the calculus path (or both) depending on your interests.

smeej 3y ago
I finished the AP Calc path my junior year, but was told colleges would still expect to see a 4th year, so I signed up for AP Stat. It was mind-numbing how easy it was by comparison. We got to the end of the semester and I realized we'd only just reached some of the principles from the first week of calculus. I don't remember why he was so proud to point out that we could now calculate derivatives (it was a long time ago), but I was thoroughly unimpressed. By the second semester, I had my college acceptance letter, so I didn't bother with the other half.
- secabeen 3y ago
  Interesting, there were no options to continue Math at a community college?
- mp05 3y ago
  The computation in calculus was the hard part... the intuition made complete sense almost all of the time. In stats it seemed the other way around. Interesting that you seem to feel otherwise, but different strokes.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  I feel like it depends on the teacher at the end of the day. At my relatively average Bay Area public high school, we offered AP Stats, AP Calc AB, AP Calc BC, and AP Physics E&M. This was the kind of HS where 10% of the student base finished BC by 10th grade and began taking Multi and Linear Algebra from our local community college or Cal. Our AP Stats teacher integrated a lot of Calc and E&M concepts into the curriculum and stressed Probability theory quite heavily, the same way our Calc and Physics teachers dug deeper into Numerics/Interpolation than the AP Board demanded. That said, the AP Stats test was an absolute joke.

4 ms·

AP Statistics has existed since 1996 and my high school (and many others) offered it as a path for students in addition to the calculus path. That is, you could

by cowsandmilk 3y ago

smeej 3y ago
I finished the AP Calc path my junior year, but was told colleges would still expect to see a 4th year, so I signed up for AP Stat. It was mind-numbing how easy it was by comparison. We got to the end of the semester and I realized we'd only just reached some of the principles from the first week of calculus. I don't remember why he was so proud to point out that we could now calculate derivatives (it was a long time ago), but I was thoroughly unimpressed. By the second semester, I had my college acceptance letter, so I didn't bother with the other half.
- secabeen 3y ago
  Interesting, there were no options to continue Math at a community college?
- mp05 3y ago
  The computation in calculus was the hard part... the intuition made complete sense almost all of the time. In stats it seemed the other way around. Interesting that you seem to feel otherwise, but different strokes.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  I feel like it depends on the teacher at the end of the day. At my relatively average Bay Area public high school, we offered AP Stats, AP Calc AB, AP Calc BC, and AP Physics E&M. This was the kind of HS where 10% of the student base finished BC by 10th grade and began taking Multi and Linear Algebra from our local community college or Cal. Our AP Stats teacher integrated a lot of Calc and E&M concepts into the curriculum and stressed Probability theory quite heavily, the same way our Calc and Physics teachers dug deeper into Numerics/Interpolation than the AP Board demanded. That said, the AP Stats test was an absolute joke.