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M&M Color Distribution Analysis. 2011. Reason.
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Reason • I love M&M’s. I’m partial to the plain Milk Chocolate variety, but I’ve been known to have a Peanut from time to time in order to remind myself why I don’t like them that much. Often, while eating a pack, I’ll wonder how they’re made and how the colors are distributed
Procedure • M&M’s that are sold at retail come in a cardboard box containing 48 packages of M&M’s. After acquiring a “two small packages (samples) and one 40 oz party size M&Ms (population)”, I counted the M&Ms in the small packages in order to calculate the color distributions (see the 1st row of the table below). Next I calculated the percentage of each color (2nd row) by dividing each color by the total number of the M&Ms in the small packages.
Population = 2620 Expected Value of each Color (my prediction of population) -> 2620 * .24 = 629 -> 2620 * .13 = 314 -> 2620 * .16 = 419 -> 2620 * .20 = 524 -> 2620 * .13 = 341 -> 2620 * .14 = 367 • Blue = 24% • Brown = 13% • Green = 16 % • Orange = 20 % • Red = 13 % • Yellow = 14 %
Summary • Two small packages of M&M and one 40 oz of M&M Milk Chocolate1, containing a total of 2620 M&M’s, were used in this project. • Blue is the most populous color according to the data; almost twice as many as the least populous. Brown, orange, red, and yellow were all within two percentage points of their expected quantities, with yellow coming closest. • This study, however, does not guarantee that any two small packages will be a good estimator for a big package. It just happened to result this way. If we collect more samples of small packages, we’ll have more evidence to support our prediction