Welcome to Mr. Burrus's AP Statistics homepage at Westbury High School.
Why study Statistics?
Statistics is a tool to make sense of vast amounts of information. Until recently common sense was sufficient for most people because daily life didn't involve processing such a large amount of data. But in the past generation or so, with the advent of personal computers, large stores of information have become readily available. You can either choose to ignore the information available or you can choose to make sense of it. Understanding Statistics is the way to make sense of it.
Statistics is to data what literacy is to words
Like grammar, Statistics is only interesting if it's used to understand something interesting. In AP Statistics we use statistical methods to research and explore a variety of topics, including ourselves. We'll collect data on ourselves through anonymous surveys. If we can come up with interesting questions that we can only answer through learning statistics, the process will be less painful and more productive.
After studying Statistics, students often ...
- read the newspaper in a new way, without their eyes glazing over when they see quantitative information;
- know what questions to ask in evaluating studies and surveys;
- understand what questions can and cannot be answered by statistical arguments;
- appreciate how much of what matters to them can be better understood with statistics; and
- feel much more confident applying both logical reasoning and common sense to quantitative topics, but are very aware that their intuition can sometimes be so wrong that it's shocking.