2011 AP Statistics Announcement

Bad news. If you are reading this, you probably are trying to get that summer extra credit assignment done...which is good. Except that as of today, AP Stats has been canceled for next school year. This time it wasn't for lack of interest, just a lack of funds to teach other math classes, so Stats unfortunately fell in order to make room. Will it return? Only time will tell. For now at least, take the summer off, relax, enjoy yourselves, and be sure to stop by and visit sometime next year.

T-Rob out...

"Looking for mu"

Ok, time for another song - probably the last one for a while. I got motivated while at the AP Reading and came up with this as we were collectively, "Looking for Mu". Enjoy

With apologies to Orianthi...



Looking for Mu

I'm looking for mu, it's unknown, unbiased
But I can make an inference
Know just what to do, I'll sample, randomly
And maybe I will find it
Confidence, interval, should turn out just fine
Even if I can't be certain
Looking for mu, gonna find mu.

I'll randomly pick, a sample set, with sample mean
An estimator unbiased
A distribution, of sample means, that's where I'll find
Everything I've ever wanted.
Finding mu is impossible
That's not going to stop me, no
Here is just what we are going to do
I'm gonna find it ready or not
I'm gonna find mu.

Trying to find mu, the value, expected
Somewhere in my interval
I'm gonna find mu
The sum of my values, divided by the sample size
It's the number we can't really know well
Not x-bar, if you ask me, well
I'm looking for mu, gonna find mu.

I'll randomly pick, a sample set, with sample mean
An estimator unbiased
A distribution, of sample means, that's where I'll find
Everything I've ever wanted.
Finding mu is impossible
That's not going to stop me, no
Here is just what we are going to do
I'm gonna find it ready or not
I'm gonna find mu.

I need to find where it's located
Concatenated? Oh no
Why can't you be between my eyes?
It's too bad that I can not decide

Do the test with 't'
It's not stupid, or useless
Gonna help you see the light

I'll randomly pick, a sample set, with sample mean
An estimator unbiased
A distribution, of sample means, that's where I'll find
Everything I've ever wanted.
Finding mu is impossible
That's not going to stop me, no
Here is just what we are going to do
I'm gonna find it ready or not
I'm gonna find mu
I'm gonna find mu

Now I found mu
95 - percent sure
I have finally seen the light.

Lessons Learned at the AP Stats Reading

1. "AP Reading" is a fancy (and somewhat pretentious) way of saying "AP Grading". We graded exams from 8:00-5:00 with two breaks and lunch. On a good day, I probably saw 1000 exams. I was trained on 2 questions and spent 7 days on just those two questions.
2. Life is WAY easier when you answer correctly. We spent 99%+ of our time siftin gthrough incorrect responses, trying to find some way to grant credit. The perfect (or even just really good) papers were a delight to score.
3. We celebrate top scores of 4 on a given question (each QUESTION gets a score of 0-4, the EXAM is scored 1-5). On Question 4, I saw about one 4 every set of 25 papers. On Question 2, it was more like 1 in 100. That means out of every 100 0r more papers, I would hope to see one that scored a 4. Once I went 286 tests without seeing one response that I could give a 4 to. Also, we noticed when runs of scores (good and bad) came from the same school. It was very cool when one school produced a run of really good tests. I would like people to say that about us next year.
4. Jokes, pictures, cartoons, etc. really aren't that funny...unless your answr is really good, which doesn't usually happen. When it does, it's very cool.
5. When you don't know the answer, or what to do, writing notes, drawing pictures, rambling about your life, begging for a point, etc. doesn't ever get you credit. But it does break up the monotony, which is nice. Reading 1000 versions of the same question in one day gets a little old. It was nice to see someone bail on the question, but write something kind of funny.
6. Don't be casual in your answer. It blew me away how many students answered the question convinced they were going to get a perfect score and ended up with a 0 or 1 because they were sloppy.
7. Don't start any response with the word "Well, ...". Nothing good EVER follows an opening like that.
8. Good responses are SO nice to see and read so well! Give your reader a break and let him/her celebrate a 4.
9. No one really cares how bad your teacher is/was.
10. The wrong WORD (or the right one) can make all the difference. Seriously. Learn your terms!
11. Many of the readers are old and very nerdy - I kid you not. Many are college professors who don't believe in calculators or any of the other conveniences we take for granted. They don't live in your world, but you have to (want to) shine in theirs. Make a concerted effort to impress the old, nerdy, stats professors and you will be very pleased with your results.

Bottom line - I learned a lot of stuff that I am going to teach you. Please believe in me - I already believe in you. Peace.

AP Reading

In case you wonder where I am later in the week, let me tell you. I will be in Daytona Beach (Florida). Sounds pretty slick, huh? But here's the deal. I am grading AP Statistics tests...about 130,000 of them. That's right - there will be just over 500 of us there spending 9 hours a day sitting in a huge room grading stats tests. I know, can you imagine anything MORE fun?

It actually will be, and this is something people (like me) look forward to all year. The cool thing is, I will be learning everything there is to know about the test that you all will take next year. I'll be working right alongside the people who wrote the test, who made up the solutions, and who decide what a passing score is. So my real task is to pick their brains about what YOU need to do to excel on it. And yes, our hotel is right on the beach, so I may spend a little time there as well.

AP Statistics is one of the younger AP courses, introduced in 1997 for the first time. It has also become the fastest growing course in terms of number of tests taken. So you are part of a historical growth in this course. Want to know some of the specifics? Here goes:

Top Exams in 2009:
1. US History: 360,000
2. English Language: 337,000
3. Literature: 332, 000
4. Calculus: 300,000
5. Government: 190,000
6. Biology: 160,000
7: Psychology: 151, 000
8. World History: 143,000
9. Statistics: 117, 000

Mean score on the AP Statistics exam: 2.83 (scale of 1-5)
% Earning at least a 3 (passing): 58.8%

One thing you might do this summer is visit the web sites of the schools you are considering and check to see what credit they will offer you for a passing score on the AP test. You will be surprised what you can earn through this course!

I will post a report when the Reading (they call is reading instead of grading, go figure) is over. Enjoy the summer learning opportunity!!