When a MATHEMATICIAN argues that statistics should be taught to high school students before calculus, how can’t we listen? Yet, the pinnacle of mathematics is calculus, a subject that’s important to students who will go on to study mathematics, engineering and the sciences but it doesn’t really apply to daily life.

On the other hand, probablility and statistics if everywhere and can be fun!

Arthur Benjamin argues that our world has moved from an analog to a digital age and statistics drives it (GOOGLE ALGORITHM ANYONE?). In fact, one reason Amazon has become so huge and successful was Jeff Bezos’ foresight in collecting consumer data.

It’s unbelievable that this TED talk was recorded in 2009 and there’s no evidence that stats has taken a front seat in high school curricula. In fact, it’s largely regarded as a “lower level” math.

Wouldn’t you love to know the probability that a guy named Arthur would wind up an academic?