The Trouble With Stats by Riley

The Trouble With Stats by Riley - December 2024 Scholarship Essay

A.P. Statistics has a 60.5% pass rate. It is considered the easiest math AP one can take in high school. When I signed up for it my sophomore year, I assumed it would come naturally to me. My past math classes had given me a few statistics problems, and they never gave me trouble. It took me two months of the class to realize I was way out of my depth, getting 60s and 70s on tests and quizzes. As the saying goes, when you hit the bottom all you can do is go up.
It wasn’t that the material was difficult, there was just a ton of it. Part of statistics is writing; you need to know every word and its definition. It felt like there were a million words you couldn’t say, or your answer changed into something completely different. Although there’s a formula sheet, it only covers the basic equations. How to get to those equations involved interpreting questions and figuring out what category each one fell into. The math itself was never a huge obstacle, but getting to the math took ages and with time, I became more likely to make errors.
It was two weeks before the midterm when I realized something needed to change. I couldn’t keep going into tests feeling overwhelmed and I couldn’t keep barely passing. I did the simplest thing I could: I asked my teacher for help. She gave me online resources and extra homework packets. I started to go to her room during lunch to study and to ask her questions. I told her I was nervous for the midterm, and she let me look at the one from the prior semester. Even in my other classes, I began to study statistics.
The day of the midterm, I didn’t feel nervous or overwhelmed. I felt calm, prepared, I knew I could not only pass, but excel. I proved myself right when two weeks later, I got my score back: 97. I still kept going to my teacher's class at lunch, and there were still tough lessons. But, through hard work, I was able to prove to myself I can do anything I set my mind to.