Ugh... ugh... ugh...

The fun continues in AP Stats, which is looking more flea-ridden every day. I know that the AP syllabus is a dog. That we expected.

What I did not fully anticipate is that the textbook is never referred to in the "lessons" that the students are asked to complete. And further, that assessments are based not on the LESSONS, but-- evidently-- on the odd random sentence or term from the textbook.

???

BEYOND bizarre.

So the first lessons goes on and on about the (false) dichotomies of quantitative/qualitative, discrete/continuous, etc. etc.

THEN spends half an hour on a scattered video featuring a colorful cast of thousands in kaleidoscopic sound bites, apparently toward the end of explaining how one constructs a
"proper" histogram (much was made of the selection of "categories" and how not to have data fall on the edges of same, how to divide them into the proper five-paragraph essay formulaic 12-category histogram... )

only to have the lesson's assessment (all 3 questions of it) refer to...



terminology including "ordinal" (hardly touched upon in said lesson) and a question which asks for a stemplot.

It could not possibly be any more clear that whoever wrote that assessment paid NO attention whatsoever to the overall emphasis in this lesson, ignored the fact that students are (nowhere-- and I do mean nowhere) directed to any reading at all in said textbook, and that furthermore, this particular question (30% of the assessment and the ONLY non-multiple choice item) covers (seemingly) 1/2 pg of some 50 pages of reading that I suspect are associated with this first lesson.



Sure. Always a good idea to include 30% "WTH??" in assessment. Nothing like letting students KNOW that you have no intention of actually supporting and guiding their learning in the subject, and that assessments are going to be "gotcha" moments of punishment.


This particular question is metaphorically SO far out of left field, and so peculiar that I have to think that "stemplot" is an error and that they actually intended to say "histogram." Lovely.



Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.