Statistics... recommended curriculum?

[Karen in SC]

What curriculums are good? Or would we be better off going through a community college? This is for my soon-to-be-senior son. He's currently doing Chalkdust Pre-calculus, but they don't offer Statistics.

Thanks!!!

[Deb in PA]

Introduction to the Practice of Statistics by David S. Moore and George McCabe (third edition, which is old!) along with an AP syllabus from CollegeBoard which incorporates this text and the videos found at Annenberg (learner.org). The answers to the odds are in the back of the text--we do not have the TM. So far, it has gone pretty well. He hopes to take the AP test, so we also have a prep book (Barrons, I think).

A friend of mine has her daughter doing Statistics this year and ordered a complete package (Teacher and Student texts) from Glencoe. When I was looking last year, I found it was difficult to locate homeschooling materials for statistics. If you can afford it, it might be worthwhile to take the course online or at a community college.

[Katia]

Our current plan is to use Life of Fred for Statistics. Right now dd is using Life of Fred Advanced Algebra and learning a LOT more than she did with TT Algebra 2. We are both pleasantly surprised with how fun it is, and also how much she has to think.

[MaryM]

We are experimenting with the online Stat course that Carnegie-Mellon is offering. So far, it looks great. You have labs available as well as the option for Mini-Tab or Excel. There is even a feature to set up a Teacher site and have access to their graded tests but I haven't gotten that far! Here's a link to all of their courses. Some are ready, some under development.

http://www.cmu.edu/oli/index.html

We also own the McCabe book and had planned on going that route with the Annenberg videos but this was too tempting for lazy Mom!

Mary

[Karen in SC]

Our current plan is to use Life of Fred for Statistics. Right now dd is using Life of Fred Advanced Algebra and learning a LOT more than she did with TT Algebra 2. We are both pleasantly surprised with how fun it is, and also how much she has to think.

I saw the other thread about these books, but wasn't able to bring up some of the pages on their website. Are these consumable workbooks? Textbooks with answers in a teacher's manual? My ds has been using Chalkdust, which he likes because he's not a reader, and these are videos. I'm not sure he'd be patient enough to work through a book, even one with humor, but I am curious about these.

Any other thoughts?

[Katia]

Did you check at Polka Dot Publishing website? They have samples from all the books, and you can also email directly to the author and he answers very quickly.

These are hardback books, not workbooks. Some of the books have "Home Companions" which are like a TE to break the texts into lessons, along with the answers for the tests.

The books are very interesting, humorous and well explained, but we are finding that you really have to work to figure out some things, which I think is a good thing. Your dc would definitely have to learn by reading instead of having a teacher on a video tell him what to do, but the author is available by email and will help with any questions your dc just can't figure out.

Did this help? I feel it's a "fuzzy" answer, but my brain is as frozen as the rest of me as the temps here are in the the negative category (it was -10 at 8am this morning!)

I'll try to help if you have any more questions, but I think you'd get better specific answers if you emailed the author.

[Karen in SC]

thank you, Katia, for pointing me to that website. That looks more helpful, and I'll do as you suggest and write the author.

Karen

[Anne/Ankara]

Another option is the online AP Statistics class at Apex Learning, [URL="http://www.apexlearning.com/Catalog/CourseOutlines/ap_statistics_sem_1.htm"]

This looks like a nice course...

[LoriM]

I'm currently teaching out of a book that I could envision using as an independent study book, with some software for added benefit. It's called Workshop Statistics and is published by Key College Press. If you paired it with the Tinkerplots/Geometer's Sketchpad/Fathom software, it would really be a great set.

http://www.keycollege.com/catalog/titles/workshop_statistics.html

There are several editions, depending on which software or tools you want to use to learn the concepts, INCLUDING one that is simply for the graphing calculator.

HTH,

LoriM