An IB Math IA Topic that has PROVEN to statistically get LOWER Marks?

Ajouté : 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]IB math IAs on statistics and probability do worse?

[00:00:05]This was really interesting to me. So, a few years ago, when I was doing my training and certification for the new IB math curriculum, now that it has analysis and approaches and applications and interpretation, I was sitting in a room with a lot of different teachers from all over the province of Ontario. And, you know, something had come up and that was for some reason, when our students do an IA in statistics and probability, because, you know, you can choose different topics. You can do functions, calculus, you know, trig, stats, probability.

[00:00:37]Uh, for some reason, when they were picking stats and probability as their topic, they were doing really bad. So, the marks that were coming back were really bad and it was a bit strange because if you had one or two students, you know, from one or two teachers, they were doing bad, you would say, "Okay, maybe they just didn't understand the material well, or maybe the teacher didn't teach it well, whatever the reason is." But, there was a surprising number of teachers from across the room and, you know, one person mentioned it and then someone else said, "Yeah, I have the same experience." And then they started sharing their story and then someone from across the room said, "Yeah, I noticed that, too. Whenever my students do an IA in stats and probability, they don't do very well statistically." Which is weird because stats and probability is actually a really interesting topic for math. I mean, that's how the entire, you know, um, casino industry is based on the math from stats and probability. It is actually super interesting, but I don't know. Look, this is not official information from the IB. This is simply an observation that I have made, that I heard, and I am, uh, sharing it with everybody here. So, if you are doing your IA and you're trying to think of a topic, I would say maybe stray away from stats and probability.

[00:01:54]Because, statistically, it's not showing to perform very well and give you a good mark.