I thought it was terrific. LMK if you need help, but if you have some programming experience already it should be a breeze.

Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner by Michael Dawson is a terrific book that will step you through the language. You will only need to study the first half of the book, through OOP to get nearly all of python.

I guess I don't think of BFSU as a textbook. It has a list of topics in the first few pages and bibiliography of books you can use to study those topics. I'm realizing now I don't know what a living book actually is, but if it's a non-fiction science book for children, then BFSU is a good resource to find them. BFSU is also terrific for suggesting ways to lead a conversation on various science topics and includes some demonstrations for those science topics. But BFSU isn't a textbook that a student would read and study.

I have a hard time accepting that there is much in the way of "intense scrutiny" given the hundreds of test locations, which I don't think anyone is auditing so much as maybe scanning social media. Here are some examples: https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/07/19/mills-high-schools-ap-test-scores-invalidated-students-cry-foul/ https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/05/18/gunn-high-students-asked-to-retake-ap-exams-due-to-testing-errors https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-11-me-ap11-story.html https://www.kusi.com/sdusd-seeking-restraining-order-from-federal-judge-over-voided-ap-test-scores/ Here's at tip: Don't take photos of your test center and students and then post it to twitter.

I agree with @SusanC that BFSU has a nice flow chart of topics that you can use as a spine. If you don't want to use textbooks and want flexibility in sequence, it might be perfect for you. He has demos, discussion questions, and a bibliography of terrific books for each topic. We used BFSU through middle school, and dd was well prepared to take AP chemistry her freshman year of high school.

On the flip side, I gamely tried teaching writing and literature for my middle school students and quickly realized I was on thin ice. I thought I could read the books ahead of my students, but (1) I'm a slow reader (2) I have read only a small handful of works of classic literature. Seriously, I've read hardly anything. (3) I can barely make out the plot points of these classic books, let alone any themes or other important stuff, so I was having to do additional reading in SparkNotes, which takes even more time. (4) I lack the general context of literature in general. I'm reading each book for the first time in isolation. I quickly hired a couple of local English majors and outsourced anything to do with reading or writing. I teach math well because (1) I've worked through ALL the AoPS books, several times over with multiple, multiple students. (2) I've had extensive experience with math contests both when I was high school and now coaching math teams and prepping students for math contests. I have the big picture of high school math and I can get in the weeds of specific problems.

92% Vax rate in my county (for 16+ yo's). My parents and DH and I have received our boosters. My college age kids wear masks outdoors, go figure, but I don't think they've been boosted yet. I have no idea if people are masking because I only leave the house to take walks outdoors. I don't mask outdoors, but I see others that do, and I feel embarrassed. I needed a few procedures and surgeries over the past few months, and there was a delay (about a week) because me and everyone else postponed medical screening for a year, and now we're all catching up. Since this pandemic began 2 years ago, I have yet to know anyone personally who has been sick with covid.

@Not_a_Number recommends black jack!

It depends on the college and it depends on your score.

Congratulations. I'm not well-versed in these things, but I heard anecdotally secondhand that Northwestern is particularly extreme in terms of the difference between ED and regular admissions. So good for your student, I hope he gets in!

I think taking DE courses at a well known school like E-R puts you on safer ground than taking courses at an unknown CC. Are these the same classes that regular undergraduates take? If so, I would make this abundantly clear in your course descriptions. He may be able to prep, but before you embark on this path, have you already located a site that will allow your student to test? Finding a school that will allow you to test was always hit or miss before the pandemic, and even this year it is still difficult to find a campus open to outsiders. Check this first, otherwise I think you are are fine with the E-R classes.

When you square both sides of an equation, you risk introducing extraneous solutions, so you need to test all your solutions in the original equation. Plugging in into the original equation we get the left hand side, and the right hand side, , so this is extraneous. Trying we get both sides of the original equation, , so this is our valid solution.

You can use whatever grading scale you prefer. There's a field on the Common App (or maybe a pulldown menu) to tell them what you use. I used +/- distinctions, but they are different from what you cited. I add 0.3 for a + and subtract 0.3 for a -. So B = 3 B+ = 3.3 B- = 2.7 But you can do whatever you prefer.

Good questions. You can represent ratios as fractions. "50 miles per hour" can be written as with the fraction bar replacing "per." Or in the context of pediatric medication dosing, on can write "20 milliliters per kilogram" as . I think of "per" as a synonym of "for every." It's similar to using "of" to represent multiplication. Have 2 of a quantity is akin to have 2 times a quantity.

I'll add that the Question Bank is really lovely. You can select problem topics, calculators or no, and generate nice worksheets with tons of practice problems and detailed solutions. It's terrific resource for prep.

I also scratched my head, isn't finding the derivative basically the first half of calculus? In answer to your question about preparing for the AP exam, I recommend going through the College Board audit so you can access their Question Bank and old exams. There are some idiosyncratic questions on the AP exam that you don't want to be parsing for the first time on the exam itself. There are lots more resources available once you get approved. If you select one of their sample syllabi, your approval will be automatic and within a few hours. If you submit your own syllabus...expect to wait several weeks or months for approval. I do this for my students who are using AoPS for calculus because the textbook doesn't have enough or the right kind of practice problems to ace the BC exam.

@VminusEplusFis2 From the Wikipedia article: The Feynman Lectures are considered to be one of the most sophisticated and comprehensive college-level introductions to physics.[5] Feynman himself stated in his original preface that he was “pessimistic” with regard to his success in reaching all of his students. The Feynman lectures were written “to maintain the interest of very enthusiastic and rather smart students coming out of high schools and into Caltech”. Feynman was targeting the lectures to students who, “at the end of two years of our previous course, [were] very discouraged because there were really very few grand, new, modern ideas presented to them”. As a result, some physics students find the lectures more valuable after they have obtained a good grasp of physics by studying more traditional texts, and the books are sometimes seen as more helpful for teachers than for students. And a link to the Feynman treatment of speed and acceleration.

Yes, I will use both interchangeably, "mile an hour" colloquially or with advanced students, but "miles per hour" in academic context, particularly with young students who are learning rate/time/distance for the first time. It isn't typical to see rate/time/distance taught in a writing curriculum, but I think it's a worthwhile endeavor because there are nice equivalences between English and mathematics, and the word "per" as an indication of a ratio is a good one. This is typically discussed in math or physics classes, but I welcome the English department to describe this continuity as well. If I am teaching a younger student about rate/time/distance, I might explain that people will often say "miles an hour" when they really mean "miles per hour" and explain the use of the word "per." The Feynman Lectures on Physics are based on Richard Feynman's lectures to CalTech students in the 1960s. I have not read Feynman, and did not use the Feynman Lectures to teach rate/time/distance to my own students. I'm fairly certain Prof. Feynman is not introducing CalTech students to time/rate/distance, but like I said I haven't read the book, so I could be wrong. I'm guessing CalTech undergraduates ought to have understood this concept long before they arrived on campus. (My Wikipedia article lists mechanics, but also radiation, heat, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics.)

This is not a quote from UHP, but from her teacher's guide. I am curious if anyone else is bothered by the use of "miles an hour" in a document decrying a lack of understanding of the concept. To my mind, "miles an hour" is not accurate. One should write "miles per hour" which is consistent with the idea of a ratio or a fraction. I had fun with a group of students explaining Galileo's dictum. If you are traveling in one space ship with no acceleration, and you see another space ship pass you by, you have no idea whether that space ship is traveling faster than you, or you are going faster than it, or perhaps you are traveling in opposite directions. Minds were blown that afternoon. I tried repeating it with another group of kids, and they just weren't getting it. 🤷‍♀️ I also enjoy describing how velocity can be negative or positive and layered on top of that you can have a negative or positive acceleration. It's all fun stuff.

By "College Calculus and Physics" do you mean AP level? Or is there a specific calculus course or college level physics course like Light and Heat?

I'm just curious and not at all well informed on this topic. Doesn't the federal government issue bonds like all the time, every year? Or are there some years when no bonds are issued?

The thing is, a high SAT score is not very helpful because as you say it's easy to max it out. A kid with a math 780 could be anything from a student from a stable home who did his homework every night to an IMO kid like @Not_a_Number. Not that I know much about MIT, but I wouldn't say it's all about admitting students from stable homes. Thank you for owning up to liking the American system, because I also have affection for this system, despite its many, many flaws, with sports at the top of my list. I prefer it to, say, the Korean system of one exam and you are either in or out. We are a test-loving family, but one annual exam is too much for even my nerves. While less helpful exams like the SAT go away, I think there will always be contests and other opportunities like AMC, USACO, and even the National Mythology Exam for students who have an interest in whatever they truly enjoy.

This is my experience from a couple of years ago, so grain of salt. I'm pretty sure that everything on the Common App is reversible until you hit the final, final, submit button. The one where everything is complete and ready to be sent to colleges. Before that you can upload the transcript and see how it looks. I recall being disappointed that the CA added a wide margin to all my pdf's so I changed my margins to make it look more normal. I uploaded and deleted documents multiple times to see how things looked and how I could organize my documents in their fields. Also, know that the Common App customer service is quite good. They are responsive and helpful.

I also don't enjoy reading the transcripts. Part of it is I don't like to read long things online, and I wonder too if it may be easier if it were in 2 column format, I don't know. Just FYI, it won't take 1.5 hours to reread, lol, and turning off the student contributions makes it a bit easier, but not by much.