Emergency AP Statistics Sub Plans (No Prep)

The requirement is not statistics knowledge

Sub plans for AP Statistics fail for a specific reason. The substitute is not just unfamiliar with the course, they are often uneasy with the arithmetic itself, so anything requiring them to check a calculation collapses, and anything requiring them to explain a concept collapses along with it. A workable plan needs three properties. A student can start it without being taught, it produces written evidence you can look at later, and the adult in the room never has to check a number.

Below are four plans that meet all three, ordered by how much notice you have.

No notice at all

You are out sick and typing on a phone before the first bell. Leave one line, and point it at a page that already tells students what to do.

Hand out or project: nothing beyond the URL: the descriptive statistics sandbox. Every point on that page is draggable, and the page itself lists three experiments to run: drag an outlier and watch the mean chase it while the median holds still; build a long right tail and watch the mean sit above the median, then reverse it; and squeeze the points together, then spread two clusters apart, to watch the standard deviation and IQR move differently. No login, no prior explanation, because the instructions are printed on the page.

Timing: the three built-in experiments run about twenty minutes worked alone. Pair students and it stretches to fill the period, since a partner who disagrees about what the mean will do next is the whole mechanism.

Student instructions, in plain words: go to the page, do the three experiments listed under the sandbox, and for each one write two sentences, what you predicted before dragging and what actually happened.

Exit task, low stakes: drag one point of your own choosing and write one sentence on which measure, the mean or the median, moved further.

Answer key: dragging a point away from the rest always moves the mean toward it and moves the median much less or not at all, because the mean uses every value in the calculation and the median only uses the position in the middle. A correct exit ticket names the mean and gives that reason. Nothing beyond that is required to accept it.

Half a day of notice

Pair a self-checking practice set with an interactive, so students both compute something and see the shape of what they computed.

Hand out or project: the normal curve explorer for the first few minutes, then the z-scores and normal distribution practice set for students to work through at their seats.

Timing: five minutes with the explorer as a whole class, dragging the two boundary markers and reading the shaded area, the z-scores, and the percentiles as they update. The remaining time on the eight practice problems, worked individually or in pairs.

Student instructions, in plain words: for the explorer, drag the markers and read the three numbers that change. For the practice set, solve each problem on paper first, then open "Show the worked solution," a dropdown under every problem, to check yourself. Do not open it first.

Exit task, low stakes: hand in the paper work for problem one and problem five only, with a box checked to say whether your answer matched before or after you checked.

Answer key: every problem's full worked solution and final answer already sit inside the page, under the disclosure a student opens. There is nothing for the substitute to compute or verify. The only judgment call is whether a student opened the solution before attempting the problem, which the honesty box on the exit task is built to surface.

A full day of notice

With a full day, use the time for a task that reads like a free-response question rather than a worksheet.

Hand out or project: Problem 1 at the scope of inference practice set, the first of eight problems on the page, with the worked solution kept closed until the writing is done. Problem 1 bundles four short scenarios, labeled (a) through (d); work through all four.

Timing: about five minutes of reading and writing per scenario, so the four scenarios inside Problem 1 comfortably fill a period once you leave time to compare answers at the end.

Student instructions, in plain words: for each of the four scenarios, write two sentences. First, was a cause-and-effect conclusion earned, and why. Second, who does the result apply to, and why. Use the phrase random assignment for the first sentence and random selection for the second, and do not swap them. If a word needs looking up, random sampling vs. random assignment states both definitions side by side, and population vs. sample covers the audience question.

Exit task, low stakes: the class votes on which of the four scenarios produced the most disagreement, and every student writes one sentence naming which of the two sentences, the causal claim or the audience, people got wrong most often.

Answer key: Problem 1's own worked solution is the key. It walks through scenarios (a) through (d) individually, then lines up all four side by side. Once the writing is collected, open that disclosure and compare it against what students wrote. A correct answer names both random assignment and random selection and applies each to the right sentence, not a general claim that the study seems fine.

Several days, planned absence

With real notice, keep the course moving instead of parking it for a one-off activity.

Hand out or project: the reading at Unit 1: Exploring One-Variable Data, swapped for whichever unit your class is actually on, alongside the matching practice set, for example the describing distributions practice set if the class is inside that unit's topics.

Timing: this spans the whole absence rather than one period. The first day is the reading and half the practice set, the second day finishes the practice set, and the final day is the short assessment below.

Student instructions, in plain words: read the unit page, work every problem in the matching practice set on paper, check each one against its own worked solution, and circle any you got wrong to ask about when class resumes.

Exit task, collected by the sub, graded when you return: a five-question quiz built from problems you pull yourself out of the same practice set, changing only the numbers.

Answer key: since you write the return-day quiz yourself from a set you already trust, you already have the key. The substitute collects papers and takes attendance, nothing more.

What to leave in the sub folder

Write the no-notice plan now, while nothing is wrong, and put it where the front office can find it without calling you. One page: the URL, one line of what to project, and the exit task question. That single sheet covers the worst case, an absence with zero notice, and it means every plan above it is an upgrade rather than something written under pressure at six in the morning.

Add the half-day and full-day plans as a second sheet in the same folder, since the only difference between them and the no-notice plan is which link goes out and how much writing gets asked for. A folder with these sheets, plus a stack of blank paper for the writing tasks, is the whole kit. None of it requires the person running the room to know a p-value from a percentile.