AP Statistics Recruitment

It's that time of year again - the time when kids start registering for the next academic year. This year, we have lots of kids that met math benchmarks and thus can take non-remedial senior level math. Lots of these kids are torn between pre-calculus, AP Calculus, and AP Statistics. Many have room to take two courses, but few will. With this time of year comes many "discussions" about the kind of math each student needs to prepare them for their chosen career field. 95% of our kids don't do their research, and thus are swayed by friends or other teachers about which class to take. I often hear from adults that statistics isn't important, so I set out to prove them wrong. I looked up requirements for popular majors at two of the colleges to which we feed the largest amount of kids. There is a third large college to which we feed, but their academic requirement website was nearly impossible to navigate today. I'll try again later.

On these two colleges' websites, I search for curriculum maps for common majors. It turns out that almost all majors (give or take a few) at Morehead State require statistics (Accounting, Business, Nursing, Biology/Pre-Med, Chemistry, Criminology, Pre-Physical Therapy, and more). At the University of Kentucky, part of "The Core" academic requirements for ALL majors includes one course on statistical logic and reasoning, and then a second on statistical inference. I must admit that I was quite surprised at UK's incredibly heavy emphasis on statistics, and I was also shocked that I didn't know this. If I don't know, how in the world are my kids going to know?

With this in mind, I printed out the common major curriculum maps and "The Core" curriculum map from the University of Kentucky. I then highlighted all the required math classes in the sequences and wrote the generic name of the course (I mean... really... what is MAT 305?) on the paper. I then made big red arrows that say statistics to point out all the statistics courses. With the help of my student TA, we taped all these documents outside my door and made a pretty informative recruitment wall.

(Please excuse the decorative ink splatter on the wall behind the papers. Some cherub decided to add their own flourishes to the hallway paint job.)