Business Statistics

Syllabus and Sample Activity

M&Ms Introduce Students to Statistics

This two-day introductory lesson engages students in the data analysis process and develops their statistical thinking with a data gathering activity, a pre-reading anticipatory set of questions, a reading assignment, and a post-reading lecture with guided notes. Students in my college business statistics course gathered data by weighing packages of M&Ms and counted the number of each color. Students entered the data into an online survey and analyzed the results in a spreadsheet. The applications of this student-collected data included discussions and activities about cleaning data, calculating numerical summaries, creating graphs, calculating probabilities, and determining independence.

When I first did this activity, I used only plain M&Ms. If you have enough students (to gather a large enough sample for analysis), I recommend using both plain and peanut M&Ms. I had my students gather data on peanut M&Ms during another class period but the novelty had worn off by then. Gathering data on both types of M&Ms allows you to explore more concepts than with just one type.

Concepts to Explore with the M&M Data

Cleaning data - It is very likely that someone is going to enter bad data (typos, misunderstanding instructions, or just being funny) and this is a good opportunity to discuss whether records with questionable data should be ignored, fixed, or deleted).
Numerical Summaries - Collecting weights and color counts allows students to create both categorical and continuous summaries (proportions and means).
Graphs - I used this dataset to demonstrate creating bar and pie charts and histograms in Excel. Students compared the distribution of weight and colors for plain and peanut M&Ms.
Probability - I used this dataset to illustrate relative frequency, probability, and independence. What is the proportion of red M&Ms? That depends on what type of M&M you are talking about.

Lesson Files

Lesson Plan
Data Terminology with M&Ms
Terminology Guided Notes
Terminology Guided Notes Key