Sunday, August 7, 2011

M&M Math Supplementals

Yes, this is how we spent our Saturday night (don't judge).

We started with sorting...well, eating. J was super excited for this lesson. So excited, that he wouldn't focus and kept eating our lesson. John snuck a few too...

Counting or eating?

"Seven" (note the multi-colored lips)
Daddy helps
Our sorted cup of M&Ms

Our resulting Pie Chart:
Next was the rolling of the M&Ms.  We got 10 M&Ms in a cup like this...



Shook it up and tossed it on the floor like this...


and counted the M's (3 in the picture below)...


We repeated 36 more times and ended up with a cool bar graph (histogram) like this...


J liked the rolling of the M&Ms more than picking and sorting the colors.  Well, J liked eating our experiment more than the experiment itself.  Sigh.  John wanted me to make sure to recommend rolling the M&Ms more than 37 times and plotting the results as you go.  The plot should be more normal looking (bell-shaped) the more you roll.  However, with our 37, I'm seeing a bell-shaped trend.  What do you think?

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Obligatory vote tag:

3/23/12 - edited to remove Pepsi Refresh voting tag - voting period is over.  We won!  Thanks for your support



P.S. I love you guys. Thanks for all of your support!

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Unless you are eating a 25+ year old bag or a specialty bag of M&Ms, tan is no longer an option. I remember doing math with M&Ms in elementary school with tan specifically. Voting for the new color occurred in middle school for me.

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