TED+Talk+2

media type="custom" key="16097340" align="center" In this TED Talk, Arthur Benjamin gives an interesting idea - make statistics the summit of all math instruction for high schoolers. I can appreciate this viewpoint. I took calculus in high school and then again (and more advanced) in college while I was an engineering student. I even tutored students in calculus later in college. But I still don't know much about statistics. And that has not served me well. From personal data, I have to agree with him. I would also point out other reasons statistics would be useful. Many news articles or internet articles provide statistics that prove their point. But how did they get them? Who is to say that their data is represented correctly? Right now, the majority of the US could not ask the right questions to assure that the statistics they are reading are correct (myself included). If students were required to take statistics though, that would change - and would make for a more honest trading of numbers and data - on the internet and elsewhere.