A statistics course your student can actually do

Why this suits homeschooling

Our statistics curriculum is built to instill curiosity and a sense of discovery in the student. The lessons expect and encourage the student to participate alongside Mr. Sun and come back to the next lesson having prepared.

• You set the pace. The lessons are pre-recorded and available on YouTube, so you can move as quickly or slowly as you need. Each video assigns a field task, giving your student productive, hands-on work to do before moving on to the next concept.
• You don't have to be the expert. The lesson videos teach the student directly. So, your role is closer to a lab partner than a lecturer. We also provide supplementary materials to help you answer their questions and guide them in the right direction: the lesson pages, the Glossary, and the Classroom Kit, where the kit for Lesson 1.0 is free to download.
• The work leaves a trace. Each project ends with products they can look back on and feel proud of, like a dataset they built, a research paper they wrote, or a dashboard or poster they presented. Over the course of the curriculum, this grows into their own portfolio.
• Builds confidence and independence. Having a personal portfolio not only helps with college applications but also increases their sense of capability. It encourages them to cultivate their own questions and enjoy the research process.
• No subscription for any tools. Google Sheets, Google Colab, R, and Looker Studio are all free and can be used from a browser. So, a laptop or Chromebook is more than enough :)

What a first term looks like

Your first term starts with Project 1: Sibling Interviews. The project consists of ten video lessons, each roughly 10 to 20 minutes long. If you pace it at one lesson a week, it fills a ten-week term.

Here is how the project progresses:

1. Week 1: planning and collecting. Watch Lesson 1.0 together. You'll prepare your interview questions, start asking around, and collect the answers in a notebook.
2. Weeks 2 to 3: building and learning the language. We take our notes and turn them into a table in Google Sheets. We learn how to organize data and use the same terms as other data scientists and researchers.
3. Weeks 4+: visualization and analysis. We dive into charts, frequencies, percentages, filters, and measures of center and spread. We meet and apply every concept through our own data rather than a textbook example.
4. Throughout: the concept table. This is a running document where the student records each new concept with a description and an example of their own. By the end, it turns into a textbook they wrote themselves! Ideally, this note taking turns into a habit over the course of multiple projects.

Finding 15 people to interview

This might be a friction point for a single-student household, so plan for it in week one. Co-ops, extended family, neighbors, a sports team, a homeschool group chat, and a church or community group all work. Interviews are short.

It is also a teachable constraint. Having a more diverse set of interviewees than just classmates can make a more interesting sample to study.

Common questions

Do I need to know statistics to teach this?

No. The lessons teach directly to the student, the way a follow-along workout video does, so you are not expected to deliver the instruction. Many parents watch alongside and learn it at the same time, which turns out to be one of the better ways to run it.

Does it work with only one student?

Yes, with one adjustment. The field tasks ask students to interview 15 to 20 people, so a single student needs a supply of willing respondents: family, neighbors, a co-op, a church group, a sports team. The interviews and other field tasks are essential parts of the course and cannot be skipped.

What age is it for?

Drawing on our background teaching middle and high school math and ELA, we designed these lessons to be accessible to motivated middle schoolers, yet rich enough for high schoolers and adults. The foundational concepts are clear and approachable, and every project has plenty of room for older students to dig deeper and increase the challenge to match their level.

What does it cost?

The video lessons and the datasets needed to follow along are completely free. The optional Classroom Kit, which includes lesson plans, quizzes, printables and answer keys, is a benefit for our Patreon community. The kit for Lesson 1.0 is free for everyone on our Classroom Kit page.

Can this count as a high school credit?

That depends entirely on your state or umbrella school, so we cannot issue official transcripts or guarantee credit.

What we can tell you is that the workload is substantive. Each project includes six or more lessons, each covering three to five statistics concepts. The projects are hands-on and require the student to produce cleaned datasets, meaningful charts, interactive dashboards, and written analyses. Completing several projects across an academic year yields a substantial body of work and documented hours. This would be ideal for building a course portfolio and logging credit for a statistics or data science elective.

Practical resources and next steps

• Implementation guide: for week-by-week logistics, including how to run field tasks and handle messy data, read our Teachers and Homeschoolers guide.
• Glossary: every statistical and data term used across the curriculum is defined in our Glossary.
• Classroom Kit: lesson plans, handouts, quizzes and answer keys. The Lesson 1.0 kit is free.

Still wondering if it's the right fit for your student?

Reach out through our contact form, or sit down and watch Lesson 1.0 together tonight to see how they like it.