Important Updates
AP Statistics Updates and New Resources for 2019-20
To help more students prepare for—and succeed on—the AP Statistics Exam, we’ve clarified the course’s focus starting with the 2019-20 school year and are introducing new resources for your classroom. We’ve also moved exam registration to the fall, a best practice that improves students’ chances of earning college credit and placement.
Download the new course and exam description
New AP Resources
This August, we’re introducing AP Classroom, with a suite of new resources designed in collaboration with AP educators that will help give students personalized feedback throughout the year. These include in-depth unit guides, personal progress checks and a dashboard to measure student progress, and a question bank of real AP questions.
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AP Statistics Course and Exam Description—Fall 2019
This is the core document for this course and is updated for the 2019-20 school year. New unit guides clearly lay out the course content and skills and recommend sequencing and pacing for them throughout the year. The CED also more clearly outlines how material will be assessed on the exam, provides instructional strategies, and gives information on the AP Program in general.
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AP Statistics Scoring Guidelines
This document details how each of the sample free-response questions in the 2019-20 CED would be scored.
Course Overview
AP Statistics is an introductory college-level statistics course that introduces students to the major concepts and tools for collecting, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from data. Students cultivate their understanding of statistics using technology, investigations, problem solving, and writing as they explore concepts like variation and distribution; patterns and uncertainty; and data-based predictions, decisions, and conclusions.
Your new course and exam description (CED) for the 2019-20 school year more clearly outlines all required course content and skills and defines how they will be assessed on the exam.
Course Content
Based on the Understanding by Design® (Wiggins and McTighe) model, this course framework provides a clear and detailed description of the course requirements necessary for student success. The framework specifies what students must know, be able to do, and understand, with a focus on three big ideas that encompass the principles and processes in the discipline of statistics. The framework also encourages instruction that prepares students for advanced coursework in statistics or other fields using statistical reasoning and for active, informed engagement with a world of data to be interpreted appropriately and applied wisely to make informed decisions.
The AP Statistics framework is organized into nine commonly taught units of study that provide one possible sequence for the course. As always, you have the flexibility to organize the course content as you like.
Unit |
Exam Weighting (Multiple-Choice Section) |
| Unit 1: Exploring One-Variable Data | 15%–23% |
| Unit 2: Exploring Two-Variable Data | 5%–7% |
| Unit 3: Collecting Data | 12%–15% |
| Unit 4: Probability, Random Variables, and Probability Distributions | 10%–20% |
| Unit 5: Sampling Distributions | 7%–12% |
| Unit 6: Inference for Categorical Data: Proportions | 12%–15% |
| Unit 7: Inference for Quantitative Data: Means | 10%–18% |
| Unit 8: Inference for Categorical Data: Chi-Square | 2%–5% |
| Unit 9: Inference for Quantitative Data: Slopes | 2%–5% |
Course Skills
The updated AP Statistics framework included in the course and exam description outlines distinct skills that students should practice throughout the year—skills that will help them learn to think and act like statisticians.
Skill |
Description |
Exam Weighting (Multiple-Choice Section) |
| 1. Selecting Statistical Methods | Select methods for collecting and/or analyzing data for statistical inference. | 15%–23% |
| 2. Data Analysis | Describe patterns, trends, associations, and relationships in data. | 15%–23% |
| 3. Using Probability and Simulation | Explore random phenomena. | 30%–40% |
| 4. Statistical Argumentation | Develop an explanation or justify a conclusion using evidence from data, definitions, or statistical inference. | 25%–35% |
AP and Higher Education
Higher education professionals play a key role developing AP courses and exams, setting credit and placement policies, and scoring student work. The AP Higher Education site features information on recruitment and admission, advising and placement, and more.
This chart shows recommended scores for granting credit, and how much credit should be awarded, for each AP course. Your students can look up credit and placement policies for colleges and universities on the AP Credit Policy Search.
Meet the current Development Committee for AP Statistics.