English Assignment

1

M&M Quantitative Literacy Assignment

1. Individual

a. Bring 2 packages of 1.69 oz. plain M&Ms to class.

i. To ensure you have the traditional colors, don’t bring in the seasonal packages. Use the M&Ms in the brown package.

ii. It is important to bring this exact size package since you will be comparing your results with those of Josh Madison’s study, so you need the same size as he used for a fair comparison.

iii. It is important to bring plain (not peanut) M&Ms for the same reason stated in item # ii above.

2. Group:

a. Work in groups of 3 students to gather data (Explore-basic).

b. Separate the M&Ms by color

c. Record your findings.

d. Write your group totals on a table drawn on the board or DocCam (ex., see below)

GROUP	BLUE	BROWN	GREEN	ORANGE	RED	YELLOW	TOTAL ALL COLORS
1	85	113	21	114	59	48	448
2	60	49	66	78	37	47	332
3	81	48	60	78	36	35	341
4	75	45	65	75	34	45	337
5	38	53	79	73	53	41	337
6	89	42	62	70	34	38	335
7	71	30	72	64	59	41	337
8	36	36	62	81	52	61	328
Class total for each color, all groups combined	535	416	487	633	364	356	2795

a. Add the number of each color recorded by each group and enter the total of each color in the “Class total for each color, all groups combined row (Analyze basic)

b. Add the total number of M&M of each color recorded by each group and enter the number in the last column, “Total All Colors” (Analyze basic)

c. Using the totals for each column, convert the table data to percentages (Understand- basic)

3. Individual,

a. Create a bar chart from the data numbers representing your findings (Visualize-intermediate) OR

b. Create a pie chart from the calculated percentages representing your findings (Visualize-intermediate)

c. Write 1-3 complete sentences comparing the class color distribution (Translate-basic) with

i. The M&Ms Consumer Affairs Office data

1. Blue—24%

2. Brown—13%

3. Green—16%

4. Orange—20%

5. Red—13%

6. Yellow—14%

ii. The data from Josh Madison’s website:

http://www.joshmadison.com/2007/12/02/mms-color-distribution-analysis

d. Write a 2-3 page report explaining (Express-intermediate)

i. The purpose of this experiment

ii. Your methodology

iii. Your discussion of the data (include your graph) -Written text must accurately compute data and present basic numerical summaries (Analyze-basic)

iv. Your conclusions based on the data

v. Most importantly, discuss what this assignment teaches about effectively gathering, interpreting, and writing about data. Also, what other topics might you approach with this ability to process quantitative information? What are the practical applications for this method of working with data?