Rigorous and Modern Content

CourseKata is a rigorous course, but because it is taught from the perspective of modern computational methods, it depends less on detailed prior knowledge from earlier mathematics courses. The rigor comes from the challenge of the assignments and the quality of the work expected of students.

All students learn coding in R, a programming language used in college and industry for data science applications. No prior experience with coding is necessary. Most assignments involve writing code which is then executed right within the digital textbook. In-class assignments are organized around Jupyter notebooks, a tool used by data scientists in the real world.

CourseKata Statistics and Data Science is for all students--those who want to re-engage with math through context and real-life meaning and those who want to accelerate into a parallel, rigorous pathway into the growing field of Data Science.

An Online Textbook Suitable for Live or Remote Instruction

CourseKata Statistics and Data Science is a comprehensive program that fits into the high school curriculum in multiple possible ways. It can replace a 4th-year statistics course, be the basis for a two-year data science pathway, or provide a dual-enrollment college-level course. It is best used in a blended learning situation in which students work through the textbook for homework, and then convene with their teacher—either face-to-face or virtually—to discuss key concepts and new data analysis examples.

Currently we offer three versions of the textbook:

• Statistics and Data Science I, which includes CourseKata's gentle introduction to R, data visualization and descriptive statistics, and basics of statistical modeling (e.g., one-way ANOVA and simple regression). It is intended for use in either a stand-alone course in Statistics and Data Science or in the first of a two-course sequence.
• Statistics and Data Science II, designed as a second-year follow up to the first course, including a review of concepts from the first course, an approach to inferential statistics grounded in simulation, randomization, and bootstrapping, and extensions to multivariate modeling
• Advanced Statistics and Data Science: A Modeling Approach, which includes CourseKata's gentle introduction to R, data visualization and descriptive statistics, basics of statistical modeling (e.g., one-way ANOVA and simple regression), and an approach to inferential statistics grounded in simulation, randomization, and bootstrapping. It combines much of the two-year sequence of topics into a single book.

For more information on the different books, click here for a blog post detailing the content and differences. Or, feel free to reach out to us via the Contact Us page.

A Growing Library of In-Class Materials

In addition to our online textbook, CourseKata has a growing library of resources such as syllabi and assessments shared by other instructors, and Jupyter notebooks with data analysis activities that can be conducted in class. CourseKata's cloud-hosted JupyterHub server is fully integrated with the online textbook, with tools instructors can use to easily distribute, collect back, and grade notebooks from students.

All of these materials are available with an instructor account.

Course Learning Outcomes

To download a detailed list of course goals and learning objectives, click here.

To download a mapping of traditional statistics topics and where they are covered in CourseKata, click here

CourseKata's Partnership with San Diego Unified

We're excited to have partnered with San Diego Unified, where teachers began piloting our materials in 2020. Since then our reach to teachers and classrooms has grown and district personnel have proven critical to our development of a Statistics and Data Science pathway for high school. You can read about the growth of data science education in San Diego schools here

Below is a recording that was produced by Data Science 4 Everyone as part of their "Ask Me Anything" series. In it, Stephanie Melville, Secondary Mathematics Resource Teacher, describes how and why the San Diego Unified School District redesigned their middle and high school math pathways and how CourseKata is being incorporated into them.

Professional Development & Support

CourseKata provides extensive professional development through study groups and workshops. Throughout the academic year, the team also provides daily Zoom “office hours” for just-in-time support of instructors and researchers. Over the summer, office hours are available weekly.

CourseKata High School Pricing

Access to CourseKata materials and professional development for high school students will be 100% covered by grants through the end of the 2023-2024 school year. After that, to ensure the long-term viability and continuous improvement of our platform, we will need to ask districts or schools to cover a portion of the cost of web hosting, professional development, and technical support.

Starting July 1, 2024, we will be charging $24 per student, per year, for access to our interactive textbook and CKHub (our integrated JupyterHub), with a 10% discount available for multi-year contracts.

An additional professional development and support fee is charged for each teacher in their first and second year implementing the curriculum. This fee ($800 per teacher for each of the first two years) covers lifetime membership in the CourseKata professional learning community, including unlimited access to study groups, workshops, office hours, etc., and technical support. Details about our pricing are available here

Where is CourseKata Statistics and Data Science Being Taught Now?