M & M Graphing Activity

 

Question
The M & M/Mars Company says that for every 10 M & M's, there will be 3 Brown, 2 Yellow, 1 Red, 1 Orange, 1 Blue, 1 Green and 1 Purple candies in each bag. Is this true for all packages of M & M's? Why or why not?

Situation

The M & M's Company says that for every 10 M & M's there will be 3 Brown, 2 Yellow, 1 Red, 1 Orange, 1 Blue, 1 Green and 1 Purple candies in each bag. The company feels very confident about this and wants to start an advertising campaign that says that they will give customers a money-back guarantee if they open up a package of M & M's and have a different percentage of each color of candy. Because the company does not want to lose money, they want to check to make sure that they are correct.
You have just been hired as a quality control specialist to test packages of M & M's and see if there are the following number of each color of M & M's in each package:

Brown
Yellow
Red
Orange
Blue
Green
Purple
3
2
1
1
1
1
1

You will need to report back to the M & M's/Mars Company and tell them whether or not they should start this advertising campaign. If you discover that this is not a good advertising campaign for them, then you will need to be ready to provide them with a new advertising campaign idea.

The company will want you to give a written presentation, complete with graphs, fequency charts, analysis and a final proposal that gives your recommendations for what the company's advertising campaign should be.

Task

Create an Excel spreadsheet that shows your M & M quality control testing and gives recommendations as to whether or not the M & M's/Mars company should start their proposed advertising campaign. This spreadsheet should contain frequency charts, bar graphs, analysis and final recommendations using the directions below. As a quality control specialist, you will need to work together with your partner and do the following things:

1. Get two packages of M & M's (or one package per group member)
2. For each package of M & M's, do the following:

Step A: Record the color data in an Excel frequency chart
Step B. Create a correctly-labeled Excel bar graph.
Step C. Write a 5-7 sentence long comparison analysis that explains the differences and/or similarities between your M & M color distribution and what colors company says are in each package.

*** Keep the contents of each package separate so that you can compare the contents in each one. Remember, you are looking to see that for every 10 M & M's there are 3 Brown, 2 Yellow, 1Red, 1 Orange, 1 Blue, 1 Green and 1 Purple candies in each bag.

3. After you have tested and recorded the data for all of your packages of M & M's, create a written paragraph that presents your recommendations for what kind of advertising campaign the M & M/Mars company should start based upon your testing. Use your data from your M & M tests to help you write this recommendation paragraph.

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