AP-Course Audit Teacher Resources
© 2020 College Board
Advanced Placement
Statistics Sample Syllabus #1
Textbook:
Statistics: Learning from Data, AP Edition Cengage Learning, 2014 by Roxy Peck and
Chris Olsen
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The syllabus must list
the title, author, and
publication date of a
college-level introductory
statistics textbook.
Student Practice:
Throughout each unit, Topic Questions will be provided to help students check their
understanding. The Topic Questions are especially useful for confirming understanding of
difficult or foundational topics before moving on to new content or skills that build upon
prior topics. Topic Questions can be assigned before, during, or after a lesson, and as in-
class work or homework. Students will get rationales for each Topic Question that will
help them understand why an answer is correct or incorrect, and their results will reveal
misunderstandings to help them target the content and skills needed for additional practice.
At the end of each unit, Personal Progress Checks will be provided in class or as
homework assignments in AP Classroom. Students will get a personal report with feedback
on every topic, skill, and question that they can use to chart their progress, and their results
will come with rationales that explain every question’s answer. One to two class periods are
set aside to re-teach skills based on the results of the Personal Progress Checks.
Additional Resources:
SPLAT—freeware by Chris Olsen that all students have access to.
All students have access to a TI-84 graphing calculator. Students use the calculator
regularly throughout the year to construct plots, to calculate probabilities, to find the
least squares regression line, to construct confidence intervals, and to perform tests of
significance. The textbook presents computer output from Minitab that students are
required to understand and interpret in order to answer the homework questions.
Desmos software—freeware.
StatCrunch software—used for demonstration.
Fathom for teacher demonstrations.
Released AP questions are used extensively throughout the course.
Short clips from the Against All Odds video series are used to bring in real-world
applications.
TED talks are shown or assigned for viewing for homework; for example, Hans
Rosling’s “Best Statistics You Have Ever Seen” or Peter Donnelly’s “How Juries Get
Fooled by Statistics.”
Video clips from CBS News, 60 Minutes, ABC News, etc., that relate current events
to statistics, such as the latest in stem cell research, the most recent studies on
antidepressants, where we are in the fight to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease, the
power of placebos, etc.
Websites such as gapminder.org or causeweb.org.
Applets such as the Rossman/Chance applets, WISE applets, Duke University applets.
Many of these applets lead students through a process to help them understand a
concept. For example, the Dolphin applet by Alan Rossman and Beth Chance, along
with their lab, help to introduce statistical inference.
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