WRITE LEGIBL Y! I was a table leader for the AP Statistics Exam for seven years, and nothing drove
me, or other readers, crazier than trying to decipher illegible scribbling. This may sound silly to you,
but you’d be amazed at just how badly some students write! It doesn’t need to look like it was
typewritten, but a person with normal eyesight ought to be able to read the words you’ve written with
minimal effort.
- Use good English, write complete sentences, and organize your solutions . You must make it easy
for the reader to follow your line of reasoning. This will make the reader happy, and it’s in your self-
interest to make the reader (very) happy. The reader wants you to do well, but has only a limited
amount of time to dedicate to figuring out what you mean. Don’t expect the reader to fill in the blanks
for you and make inferences about your intent—it doesn’t work that way. Also, answer questions
completely but don’t ramble. While some nonsense ramblings may not hurt you as long as the correct
answer is there, you will be docked if you say something statistically inaccurate or something that
contradicts an otherwise correct answer. Quit while you are ahead. Remember that the amount of
space provided for a given question does not necessarily mean that you should fill the space.
Answers should be complete but concise. Don’t fill space just because it’s there. When you’ve
completely answered a question, move on. - Answers alone (sometimes called “naked” answers) may receive some credit but usually not much .
If the correct answer is “I’m 95% confident that the true proportion of voters who favor legalizing
statistics is between 75% and 95%” and your answer is (0.75, 0.95), you simply won’t get full credit.
Same thing when units or measurement are required. If the correct answer is 231 feet and you just say
231, you most likely will not receive full credit. - Answers, and this is important, must be in contex t. A conclusion to an inference problem that says,
“Reject the null hypothesis” is simply not enough. A conclusion in context would be something like,
“At the 0.05 level of significance, we reject the null hypothesis and conclude that there is good
evidence that a majority of people favor legalizing statistics.” - Make sure you answer the question you are being asked . Brilliant answers to questions no one
asked will receive no credit. (Seriously, this is very common—some students think they will get
credit if they show that they know something, even if it’s not what they should know at the time.)
Won’t work. And don’t make the reader hunt for your final answer. Highlight it in some way. - Simplify algebraic or numeric expressions for final answers . You may still earn credit for an
unsimplified answer, but you’ll make the reader work to figure out that your answer is equivalent to
what is written in the rubric. That will make the reader unhappy, and, as mentioned earlier, a happy
reader is in your best interest. - If you write a formula as part of your solution, use numbers from the question . No credit is given
for simply writing a formula from a textbook (after all, you are given a formula sheet as part of the
exam; you won’t get credit for simply copying one of them onto your test page). The reader wants to
know if you know how to use the formula in the current problem. - If you are using your calculator to do a problem, round final answers to two or three decimal places
unless specifically directed otherwise. Don’t round off at each step of the problem as that creates a
cumulative rounding error and can affect the accuracy of your final answer. Also, avoid writing
calculator syntax as part of your solution. The readers are instructed to ignore things like “normalcdf,
1PropZTest,” etc. This is called “calculator-speak” and should not appear on your exam - Try to answer all parts of every question —you can’t get any credit for a blank answer. On the other
hand, you can’t snow the readers—your response must be reasonable and responsive to the question.
Never provide two solutions to a question and expect the reader to pick the better one. In fact,
readers have been instructed to pick the worse one. Cross out clearly anything you’ve written that you
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