Desmos Is Coming to the 2026 AP Statistics Exam!

Today's blog post comes to us from all-star AP Stats teacher and Desmos guru Bob Lochel. Bob is in his 28th year teaching at Hatboro-Horsham High School, located in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Bob has been an AP Statistics Exam reader and table leader, and has worked with many teachers on the east coast as a Desmos Certified Presenter. Bob shares his classroom ideas often on his site, mathcoachblog.com.

The College Board just announced that the Desmos graphing calculator will be available in Bluebook for students to use on the digital AP Statistics Exam starting on the 2026 exam. This is an exciting opportunity to promote equity on the AP Statistics exam - ensuring all students have access to robust tools appropriate for statistical practice. It is also a great time to consider how teachers can use Desmos throughout the year to encourage investigation of statistical ideas.

But what if you are a teacher new to using Desmos? Where’s the path for getting started?

First, welcome to the Desmos community. Hopefully you will discover there is a deep network of teachers out there willing to help you with questions and classroom moves. The Desmos Educators Facebook group is a great place to lurk, ask questions, or pick up a new Desmos move from the community. Also, the Desmos Studio YouTube channel contains many bite-sized “Learn Desmos” videos.

What can Desmos do for your statistics classroom? Here are four areas in the AP Statistics course where Desmos can be used on a daily basis in your classroom. 

EXPLORING ONE-VARIABLE DATA

Copy and paste lists of data from Excel or Google Sheets, or enter your own data, and you are on your way. Constructing boxplots, dotplots, and histograms is possible - look under the “show keyboard” button on the bottom left of your screen, then click “functions” and scroll down to “visualizations”. One-variable statistics are also available by typing “stats” or using the menu under the “show keyboard” button. 

EXPLORING TWO-VARIABLE DATA

Copy and paste two columns of data and you’re automatically provided with a table of data, with a scatterplot ready to explore. The new regression button near the top of the table allows you to include the LSRL, or investigate other regression forms. 

Is a linear model appropriate for this data set? Let’s take a look at the residual plot, which can also be quickly generated.

PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTIONS

A menu of distributions is now available under the new “Inference” widget, located under the “Add Item” (the plus sign) button on the top-left menu. The menu includes Normal, t, chi-square, uniform, binomial, Poisson, and geometric distributions. For each distribution, users can select Inner, Outer, Right and Left areas in order to find appropriate probabilities. In a binomial distribution, you can also click the top of any segment to quickly find an individual probability.

The normal distribution also provides Inner, Outer, Right and Left areas and, additionally, now includes the ability to locate a value based on area, using the new “Bounds” option.

CONFIDENCE INTERVALS AND SIGNIFICANCE TESTS

The most exciting additions to Desmos are the capability to construct a confidence interval and compute a test statistic and p-value for a hypothesis test. For quantitative data, the same lists used to compute one-variable statistics can be used here, or you can type in a new list when prompted. For AP Statistics, inference for means and proportions is available for both one and two-samples. Chi-square tests are also an option, with tables to enter counts at the ready.

After choosing the procedures, users can then select Confidence Interval or Significance Test - or both! Choosing both options provides a wonderful opportunity to investigate the relationship between a CI and a two-tailed test. 

It’s an exciting time to teach statistics! I am looking forward to using these tools with my classes to not only perform calculations, but to investigate statistical ideas throughout the year. 

In the coming months, Math Medic will share short tutorials to help you get started!