AP Statistics Syllabus – Revised June 2011
Course Number 1210320
Text:
· Stats Modeling the World, Bock, Velleman, De Veaux, 2010. Problem assignment references in the syllabus are to the corresponding section in the text.
Course Design:
· The primary text provides the general design for this course. Students are
required to read the chapters from the textbook before the topics are
discussed in class so that students are more familiar with the topic and more
time can be devoted to investigative activities and less time on lectures.
· Each student will be assigned a TI graphing calculator at the beginning of the year and it will be their property until the last day of class. If a student elects to use some other calculator, like the TI-Nspire or TI-89 they are responsible for being able to use it in a statistical setting.
· In all cases, students will be required to do all calculations (w/o graphing calculator function) until they have a good understanding what is
involved in the calculation. Once that student has mastered the concepts
involved in the calculation they will be instructed on how to do the same
calculations using the TI-84 function and from that point on the students are free to answer questions with or w/o a graphing calculator.
· There will be several occasions throughout the year in which students will do activities involving computer generated reports. These activities will require students to be able to interpret the results and communicate their finding in a written report. The emphasis on all homework, classwork, and activity reports will be on the student’s ability to arrive at the correct conclusion along with communicating their results in appropriate statistical language.
· Hopefully, by the end of this course, students will realize that writing complete responses using appropriate justifications is a critical aspect of gaining statistical proficiency.
· Students will be assigned an investigative task for most chapters. These tasks will require the students to use, apply and analyze the topics they have learned in that chapter in a new setting.
· Student progress will be assessed using the standard chapter quizzes, unit tests, along with grades for homework, activity reports and there will be two major projects.
· Their midterm grade will be a comprehensive report on the material we covered in the first half of the year (one or two variable descriptive statistics) and the second major report will be their final grade and this report should be on the material we covered in the second half of the year (Inferential Statistics).
Midterm and Final Project:
· Students will collect data or design and conduct an experiment to investigate a topic of their choosing. The written report should include a title and the following sections;
o Introduction: Describe your topic to the reader and your motivation for picking this topic.
o Methodology: How did you gather your data or how the experiment was conducted?
o State all resources.
o Results: Present the data in table or graph form in such a way that conclusions can easily be made. Make sure graphs are labeled appropriately.
o Conclusions: State your conclusions in appropriate statistical terms or what conclusions can be drawn from your experiment. State any unusual finding that might cause concern. What was learned from this project?
o Students will be given examples of excellent reports from past students along will reports that were considered unacceptable, so that students will have a better idea of what is expected of them. Students will be graded based on a rubric that they will have before the report is graded.
Primary Textbook References and Resource Material
(Noted with the following letters in the Course outline)
· Bock, Velleman, De Veaux, Stats Modeling the World. 3rd edition. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2010. (BVD)
· Yates, Daniel, Moore, David, and Starnes, Daren. The Practice of
Statistics. 2nd edition. New York: W.H.Freeman and Co., 2003. (YMS)
· V Annenber/CPB. Against All Odds: Inside Statistics. 26-30 minute video
clips. Washington D.C.: The Annenburg/CPB Collection. 1989 Videocassettes www.learner.org Note: not all videos listed are shown during class time.
Often students take the video home to review for a class or test.
· TI Texas Instrument TI-84 graphing calculator.
· Printed Test Bank and Resource Guide (TB) / Golden Binder (GB) are the ancillary materials provided by the texts BVD, YMS respectively. Both have a wide variety of activity exercises in which the students are encouraged to explore some phenomena and come to some type of statistical conclusion about what is happening. These activities will give students practice in communicating methods, results and interpretations using the vocabulary of statistics along with drawing connections between all aspects of the statistical process, including design, analysis and conclusions.
· Study Island: http://www.studyisland.com/ (SI)
· AP The College Board AP Statistics released exam problems will be used throughout the course with a heavier emphasis as we get closer to the AP exam.
Homework problems
· Will be assigned from the Primary textbook unless otherwise noted. All questions will be answered in complete sentences and all conclusions will be written in context of the problem. Homework problems that involve the graphing calculator must first be set up with an appropriate equation and then the final answer can be recorded.
ADDITIONAL TOPICS
1. Significant familiarity with the TI-84, shortcuts and special functions.
2. Additional work on simulations beyond the scope of the text.
3. Biographies of mathematicians who have contributed to the study
of statistics.
4. Students will be given a weekly AP test practice problem. More intensive work on practice AP exams is done just before the exam.
Curriculum and Pacing Guide
Mathematics: AP Statistics
Unit 1: Exploring and Understanding Data
In this unit we cover data displays and summaries. Many students will recognize some of the material from middle and high school, so our emphasis is on statistical thinking. Of course, we define terms and provide examples. But we also discuss why methods presented are used, and what we hope to learn from them. These are concepts that appear throughout the course. Even more important than what to look for in a histogram or how to summarize the spread of a distribution is the underlying lesson that there are reasons for displaying and summarizing data. These reasons inform and motivate the entire course.
Essential Questions:
· Why is statistics important?
· What is the nature of the data?
· Describe the type of graph that would be most appropriate for different data sets, and justify the choice.
· What are common distribution shapes and describe at least one characteristic of each.
· How can you quickly order data and, at the same time, reveal the distribution shape?
· What are commonly used measures of central tendency? What information do they provide?
· How do variance and standard deviation measure data spread? Why is this important?
· Given a boxplot, determine the five number summary and explain what is revealed about the spread of the data?
· Analyze the effects of adding/subtracting, multiplying/dividing on the mean and variance of a data set.
· What are some characteristics of a normal distribution?
· What does the empirical rule tell you about data spread about the mean?
· Can you compare apples and oranges?
· What is a standard normal distribution?
· What is a standard z score?
· How do you convert any normal distribution to a standard normal distribution?
Days / Chapter / Topic / Concepts & Terms / Assignment0 / 1 / What is Statistics?
- TB Class Survey 1-5, 1-6 / Read Ch. 1 pgs. 2-6
1 / 2 / Data / Data, Data table, Case, Population, Sample, Variable, Units, Categorical Variable, Quantitative Variable / Pgs.16-18 #2, 4, 8, 10, 14, 16, 26
4 / 3 / Displaying and Describing Categorical Data
- TB WS 3-7
- (SI) Categorical Data / Frequency table, Relative frequency table, Distribution, Area principal, Bar Chart, Pie Chart, Categorical data condition, Contingency table, Marginal distribution, Conditional distribution, Independence, Independence, Segmented bar chart, Simpson’s paradox / D1:Pgs. 38-39 #6, 8-10, 12-16 even
D2:Pgs. 39-40 #18-24 even
D3:Pg. 41 #26-30 even
D4:Pgs. 42-43 #32-38 even
TB Investigative Task: “Race and the Death Penalty”
6 / 4 / Displaying and Summarizing Quantitative Data
- Refer to YMS Ch 1 #6for constructing bar graph and circle graph
- Refer to YMS Ch 1 # 14 for constructing a histogram
- Supplementary material YMS Ch 1 #32 and 34 ; Resistant & Nonresistant
- (SI) Central Tendency & Spread
- (SI) Dotplots
- (SI) Stemplots
- (SI) Histogram
- (SI) Cumulative Frequency Plots / Distribution, Histogram, Gap, Stem-and-leaf display, Dotplot, Shape, Center, Spread, Mode, Unimodal, Bimodal, Uniform, Symmetric, Tails, Skewed, Outliers, Median, Range, Quartile, Interquartile range, Percentile, 5-Number Summary, Mean, Resistant, Variance, Standard deviation / D1: GB Quiz 1.1A for #1 do a bar graph and a circle graph; #2 do a histogram and a split stem plot. No description necessary.
D2:GB Quiz 1.1A For both questions, describe the distribution.
D3:Pgs.72-73 #6-14 even
D4:Pgs. 73-75 #16-28 even
D5:Pgs. 75-76 #30-42 even
D6:Pgs 77-78 #48
TB Investigative Task “Dollars for Students”
4 / 5 / Understanding and Comparing Distribution
- TB WS 5-5
- (SI) Boxplots / Boxplot, Outlier, Far Outlier, Comparing distribution, Comparing boxplots, Timeplot / D1:GB Quiz 1.2 B or C
D2: Pgs.95-96 #6-12 even
D3: Pgs. 97-100: #14, 16, 20, 24, 28
D4; Pg. 101 #34, 36
TB Investigative Task
“Auto Safety”, “SUV Insurance”
4 / 6 / The Standard Deviation as a Ruler and the Normal Model
- TB Class Example 6-4 / Standardizing, Standardized value, Shifting, Rescaling, Normal model, Parameter, Statistic, Z-score / D1 & 2:Pgs. 129-130 #2-22 even
D3: Pg. 131 #26-30 even
D4: Pgs. 132-133 #38-42 even
TB Investigative Task
“Normal Model”
2 / Review
1 / Test
21 / Total
Total Days: 21
Unit 2: Exploring Relationships between Variables
In this unit we expand on the idea of considering a second variable. Chapters7, 8, and 9 discuss relationships between two quantitative variables, introducing scatterplots, correlation, and regression. The discussion is sophisticated and rich in new concepts and points of view, even though there is not mention of inference. We’ll see these methods (and inference for them) again in Chapter 27.
Essential Questions:
• How can a scatter plot be used to describe the association between quantitative variables in terms of form, strength, and direction?
• Tell how to compute the correlation coefficient and what does it reveal about the strength of the linear relationship between two random variables?
• What is the least-squares criterion? How do you find the equation of the least-squares line?
• Explain the significance of the residual plot in an analysis of the least squares regression model.
• What is the coefficient of determination, and what does it tell you about the explained variation of y in a random sample of data pairs (x,y)?
• How would the slope of the least squares regression line be interpreted?
• What procedure should be used, if any, when a nonlinear scatterplot is encountered?
Days / Chapter / Topic / Concepts & Terms / Assignment3 / 7 / Scatterplots, Association, and Correlation
- TB Class Example 7-3 & 7-7
- (SI) Scatterplots / Scatterplots, Association, Outlier, Response variable, Explanatory variable, X-variable, Y-variable, Correlation Coefficient / D1: Pgs.164-165 #2-10 even
D:2 Pgs. 165-167 #12-26 even
D:3 Pg. 168 # 32 & 34
D4: Pg. 169 #36
4 / 8 / Linear Regression
- TB WS 7-7 Goes with Ch. 7&8
- TB Class Example 8-5
- TB WS 8-9
- (SI) Scatterplots / Model, Linear model, Predicted value, Residuals, Least squares, Regression to the mean, Regression line, Line of best fit, Slope, Intercept, Standard deviation of the residuals, R2 / D1: Pgs. 192-193 #2-10 even
D2: Pg. 193 # 12-22 even
D3: Pgs. 194-195 #24-32 even
D4: Pgs. 195-196 # 34 & 36
TB Investigative Task
“Smoking”
4 / 9 / Regression Wisdom
- TB Class Example 9-3
- TB Class Activity 9-5 & 9-6
- TB WS 27-9
- (SI) Scatterplots / Extrapolation, Outlier, Leverage, Influential point, Lurking variable / D1: Pgs. 214-215 #2-8 even
D2: Pg. 216 #12-16 even
D3: Pgs. 217-218 #20, 22
D4: Pgs. 218-219 #24, 26
Pg. 208 Just checking
TB Investigative Task
“Olympic Long Jumps”
4 / 10 / Re-expressing Data: Get it Straight
- TB Class examples 10-3, 10-4, 10-5
- TB WS 10-7
- GB Quiz 4.1 A, B, or C
- (SI) Scatterplots / Re-expression, Ladder of Powers, Linear Transformation, exponential growth model, Power law model / D1: Pg. 239 #2, 4
D2: Pgs. 239-241 #6-12 even
D3: Pg. 241 #14
D4: Pg. 242 #18, 20
2 / Review
1 / Test
18 / Total
Total Days: 39
Unit 3: Gathering Data
We’ve been examining data, noting patterns and relationships, and finding models to describe them. Now we address where these data come from. The essential insight in gathering data for statistical analysis is the central role of randomness. We sample randomly or assign subjects to treatments at random. We randomize to minimize biases and to reduce the influence of effects we cannot control.. Even more important, we randomize to make it possible to use statistical inference methods that can extend our understanding beyond the data at hand to the world at large. In this unit we discuss randomness, apply it to gathering data, formalize it with probability, and then connect it to the summaries and models of the first two parts with inference.
Essential Questions:
• How can a random sample be obtained?
• What is the difference between a random sample and a simple random sample?
• What are the other types of sampling techniques? Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type.
• What types of bias can be encountered and why is it important to reduce bias?
• Discuss the different types of random sampling designs and when it is appropriate to use each design.
• Describe the difference between an observational study and an experiment?