Thanks for clarifying that. So you can give full details of age, background, etc to AoPS "staff" to get the best feedback on course suitability, but you can be totally (age, background,name)-anonymous to the other AoPS "customers".
Thanks for analysing the courses. I've now had a good explore of the AoPS website. We are looking for a "toe-dipping" course, just to see if AoPS will work out yet for DS8. (I'm concerned he'll find the format unappealing at his age, or that he won't be able to keep up with the non-mathematical aspects of it.) It's a good idea to look at the shorter (and cheaper) courses, and for the lower level courses that means:
Introduction to Counting & Probability $265 ($307 with books) 12 lessons of 90 minutes each.
Introduction to Number Theory $265 ($312 with books) 12 lessons of 90 minutes each.
MATHCOUNTS/AMC 8 Basics $245 12 lessons of 90 minutes each.
Advanced MATHCOUNTS/AMC 8 $245 12 lessons of 90 minutes each.
It seems that MATHCOUNTS/AMC 8 Basics only needs Prealgebra, while Intros to C&P and NT need about the first half of Algebra 1, so that suggests AMC 8 Basics as a course to start with. I realize the AMC 8 courses could be redundant if you do all the "Intro" courses, but on the other hand if it falls through (if DS8 doesn't take to AoPS at the time) there's not much lost and he doesn't need to "repeat" some course to cover "irredundant" material. It would just be (difficult, compared to K12Inc) problem solving, which is what he needs.
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DS8 just finished the K12Inc Prealgebra, and found it very easy. The problem is that these courses are designed to only require a rudimentary "mastery" of the material. He could probably get through a few more of these "rudimentary" types of K12Inc courses pretty easily, but I'm worried about how that would turn out. (It's not just K12Inc. The problem is with any course aimed at typical students.) I'm torn as to how to proceed. I'm seriously thinking of not getting the next K12Inc course (Alg1) until August, and instead working through Alcumus for a while, then taking an AoPS course and generally trying to "toughen" DS8 up a bit, and also get a much broader coverage of maths topics than just what's in the standard Alg1/Geom/Alg2/TrigPrecalc/Calc path. On the other hand Alg1/Geom/Alg2/TrigPrecalc/Calc is just basic stuff a mathy person should learn before going to more advanced stuff, so why delay, why not just keep going through these courses as soon as one is ready? (DS8 is in a virtual school and can do courses at his pace. I'm trying to optimize the pace.) It's quite a dilemma. Thoughts, anyone?
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