Sandeep Agrawal
Professor Dr. M. Reza Zomorrodian
MAT300
March 12, 2013
Abstract The following assessment investigates the practices involved in this semester’s statistical M&M evaluation. The paper initially describes the individual random samples taken and then combined into the class’ data set. Then the totals, their proportions, and some other descriptive statistics are detailed before examining the confidence intervals for the proportions. The next section tests the sample proportions against M&M’s advertized proportions. The final element of the project compares the percent of the Red and Brown candies in order to verify M&M’s claim of equality. The conclusion of the report offers recommendations for correcting any inconsistent proportions. Sweetening Statistics
Oddly enough, it was through the analysis of 1.69 oz bags of Milk-Chocolate M&M’s that made statistics my friend. Throughout the semester, the project used M&M’s to show many statistical principles in action. Each stage was simultaneously amusing and delicious. Not only was the project an ideal way to make statistics immediately understandable for anyone, it gave students the opportunity to use the hard-shelled candy analysis for more advanced elements in the course. Apparently, just like anything else, sweetening Statistics will in fact, make it more appealing.
Part 1 (Sampling)
In the initial phase of the project, each student’s individual responsibility ironically helped to increase the actual, very-collective objective of this phase, a single data set containing everyone’s results. The concepts of population, samples, and sampling methods learned from the first week’s text were reinforced by randomly selecting a bag from the display of three different stores. From each of the personally sampled bags, the different colors were then separated and inventoried within an excel file, which was subsequently submitted, combined with the others,
References: Fuller, P. (2007, August 29). Mnmunwrapped. Retrieved June 2, 2011 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQZZdkkuioQ Het. (2002, August 25). Thing [Web log comment]. Everything2 Media, LLC. Retrieved June 4, 2012, from http://everything2.com/title/M%2526M%2527s Larson, R., & Farber, B. (2009). Elementary statistics: Picturing the world: 2009 custom edition (4th ed.). NJ: Pearson Custom Publishing. M&M FAQ. (n.d.). [Fact sheet]. Retrieved from http://sobek.colorado.edu/~mciverj/M&Ms_FAQ.pdf