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<p>I probably spent an hour out of class at most on calculus, whereas in college, I spent 8-10 hours trying to understand stats and do the homework. The fact that people who can’t do calc think AP stats is easy tells me that AP stats is watered down so much that people leave with very little. If all they are doing is chugging through formulas, the useful info that people take away from it probably could be condensed down to 20 min.
I work in a field which statistics is used and all people need to actually use from stats is the following:</p>
<ol>
<li>what is the average, median, standard deviation, standard error? (people probably already knew what these were before the class)</li>
<li>concept of statistical significance</li>
<li>p-values less than 5 for statistical significance</li>
<li>non-random sampling doesn’t yield reliable results</li>
</ol>
<p>OK, class over LOL.</p>
<p>People don’t really need trig or geometry if they aren’t going into STEM fields either, if you are going to argue from what needs to be used. That’s not why they make everyone take these subjects. The point is to develop abstract thinking.</p>