Professors present at North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference

Two faculty members in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics helped inform current high school teachers of the common pitfalls students make while conveying answers in the free response section of the Advanced Placement statistics exam.  

Associate Professor of Statistics Kirsten Doehler and Associate Professor of Mathematics Jim Beuerle shared their work at the 2014 North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference on October 30, 2014.

Doehler and Beuerle’s presentation, “Lessons Learned from the 2014 AP Statistics Reading,” was given to an audience of mathematics teachers of the Advanced Placement statistics exam. 

The 2014 exam was taken by more than 183,000 students throughout the world. While the exam contains multiple choice and six free response questions, the 90-minute presentation focused on three of the free response questions. 

The goal of the presentation was to inform current teachers of the common pitfalls that students make while conveying their answers. Both Doehler and Beuerle emphasized that the non-computational communication aspect of a student solution was often the key to a successful solution.

The 2014 AP statistics reading marked the fifth time the presenters participated in an AP reading.