STATISTICS

He has been involved nationally and internationally in workshops and conferences mostly relating to statistics for over 35 years. He has reviewed materials for The Mathematics teacher, the AP Central web site, The American Statistician, and the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and is on the editorial board of the Teaching Statistics journal. He is a co-author, with Roxy Peck and Tom Short, of the Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis, now in its 6th edition, and Statistics: Learning from Data, now in its 2nd (updated) edition.
Current projects involve moderating the AP Statistics Teacher Community and writing computer programs to support the teaching of AP Statistics.
The AP Statistics Course and Exam Description, revised in 2019, goes beyond a mere “Description” of the course; it offers a sound framework and resources for building quality instruction. A bit of new content was added to the course in 2019, along with a veritable torrent of resources for teachers. The CED is packaged into nine Units, each with a wealth of specificity and detail about what your students will be expected to know and do. We will review the Big Ideas and the specific Skills students will need to succeed in AP Statistics and provide information about the structure of the AP Statistics exam and the rubrics used to evaluate student responses. We will focus on statistics as an active endeavor and present activities that will engage your students and get them “out of their seats.” The use of technology -- graphing calculators, and statistical software -- will be stressed throughout the week. Communication – the presenting an effective argument about interpreting data -- is an essential part of doing and teaching statistics; a large part of our time together will be in discussion and interpretation, not me pontificating! The sequence of statistical topics, and approximate allocation of time follows below. Generally, we will focus more on the content and teaching of the course early in the week, and more on the exam and exam issues as we march through the week.
• Unit 1: Exploring One-Variable Data. Amphibians, Circadian rhythms, Old pottery, and that age-old question: Are snakes left-handed?
• Unit 2: Exploring Two-Variable Data. Categorical data (Two-way tables) and Correlation and Regression (including outliers, high-leverage points, and influence). Gazelles, Alice in Wonderland, Therapods (e.g. T. Rex), the Beatles, and Lizzie Borden.
Day 2:
• Unit 3: Collecting data – sampling and the design of experiments
• Observational studies and Experiments
• Strategies for planning experiments: The Completely Randomized Design, the Randomized Block Design. The logic in planning an experiment: Random selection, random assignment, and confounding. Clam dancing, Bambi vs. the World, Fly Fishing and Slot Machines.
• Unit 4: Probability, Random Variables, and Probability Distributions. Coins, Dice, the Spoon Law of Large Numbers, the likeability of coyotes, the Titanic, and Athenian democracy.
• Unit 5: Sampling distributions: Means, proportions, etc. What is the theory, and how can we teach it via simulation? (Hint: Statkey)
• Unit 6: Inference for Categorical Data: Proportions
• Unit 8: Inference for Categorical Data – Chi square
• Unit 9: Inference for Quantitative Data -- Slopes