PAUL RODRIGUEZ
Paul Rodriguez has taught for 27 years, including AP Statistics for over 20 years. He works for The College Board on the PreAP math committee and has participated in the AP reading since 2004, including 6 years as a reader, 12 years as a table leader and 10 years as a rubric team member. Paul was a member of the AP Statistics Test Development Committee for 7 years the responsibility of writing the AP exam, a co-author of the test bank for the Statistics and Probability with Applications textbook, and he was the co-author of the new AP Statistics Course and Exam Description. Paul has conducted several 2-day workshops and summer institutes sponsored by the College Board. He enjoys the opportunity to share his love of statistics, simulations, using technology in the classroom, and he especially enjoys learning from the experiences of workshop participants. With the formation of the new AP PreCalculus program Paul was tapped to be in the first cohort to be trained to bring this curriculum to life. |
Paul can be contacted at troyrodmath@hotmail.com |
COURSE DESCRIPTION
WHY this NEW AP PRECALCULUS course?
The ProblemEvery year, tens of thousands of American students are derailed by a common obstacle: inadequate preparation for higher-level math. A third of college students spend time and money on remedial math courses that don’t count toward their degrees because they lack sufficient math skills.
About the CourseIn AP Precalculus, students explore everyday situations using mathematical tools and lenses. Through regular practice, students build deep mastery of modeling and functions, and they examine scenarios through multiple representations. They will learn how to observe, explore, and build mathematical meaning from dynamic systems, an important practice for thriving in an ever-changing world.
AP Precalculus prepares students for other higher-level mathematics and science courses. The framework delineates content and skills common to college precalculus courses that are foundational for careers in mathematics, physics, biology, health science, social science, and data science.
What Will Students Experience in AP Precalculus?\
Modeling Real-World Data: Students will apply the mathematical tools they acquire in real-world modeling situations. By examining scenarios, conditions, and data sets and determining and validating an appropriate function model, students gain a deeper understanding of the nature and behavior of each function type.
Exploring Multiple Representations: Students will examine functions through multiple representations. Students will gain a deeper understanding of functions by examining them graphically, numerically, verbally, and analytically.
Mastering Symbolic Manipulation: Students will develop rigorous symbolic manipulation skills needed for future mathematics courses. Students learn that a single mathematical object can have different analytical representations depending on the function type or coordinate system, and that the different analytical representations reveal different attributes of the mathematical object.
Harnessing a Dynamic World: Students will engage in function building that does not reflect a static view of things but embodies how things change. Every function representation characterizes the way in which values of one variable simultaneously change as the values in another variable change. This study of functions and their graphs as embodying dynamic covariation of quantities prepares students to understand an ever-changing world.
The ProblemEvery year, tens of thousands of American students are derailed by a common obstacle: inadequate preparation for higher-level math. A third of college students spend time and money on remedial math courses that don’t count toward their degrees because they lack sufficient math skills.
About the CourseIn AP Precalculus, students explore everyday situations using mathematical tools and lenses. Through regular practice, students build deep mastery of modeling and functions, and they examine scenarios through multiple representations. They will learn how to observe, explore, and build mathematical meaning from dynamic systems, an important practice for thriving in an ever-changing world.
AP Precalculus prepares students for other higher-level mathematics and science courses. The framework delineates content and skills common to college precalculus courses that are foundational for careers in mathematics, physics, biology, health science, social science, and data science.
What Will Students Experience in AP Precalculus?\
Modeling Real-World Data: Students will apply the mathematical tools they acquire in real-world modeling situations. By examining scenarios, conditions, and data sets and determining and validating an appropriate function model, students gain a deeper understanding of the nature and behavior of each function type.
Exploring Multiple Representations: Students will examine functions through multiple representations. Students will gain a deeper understanding of functions by examining them graphically, numerically, verbally, and analytically.
Mastering Symbolic Manipulation: Students will develop rigorous symbolic manipulation skills needed for future mathematics courses. Students learn that a single mathematical object can have different analytical representations depending on the function type or coordinate system, and that the different analytical representations reveal different attributes of the mathematical object.
Harnessing a Dynamic World: Students will engage in function building that does not reflect a static view of things but embodies how things change. Every function representation characterizes the way in which values of one variable simultaneously change as the values in another variable change. This study of functions and their graphs as embodying dynamic covariation of quantities prepares students to understand an ever-changing world.