A Flavorful Application of Mean, Median, Mode

I was looking for a different way for students to apply their knowledge of mean, median, and mode in Algebra 1. I wanted some application where they can use mean, median, and more in a different context. 

I found this article a couple of months ago and found it really interesting.

https://qz.com/918008/the-color-distribution-of-mms-as-determined-by-a-phd-in-statistics/

I had students read this article and groups and come up with what they noticed/wondered about the article. I asked the students if I gave them a pack of M&M's what they would be to extrapolate from the pack. They said they needed to know the total M&M's in the package to determine the location where they were made and the color breakdown inside each one.

Each group of students were given a package of M&M's and had to count how many of each color they had.

Then we put all of our data on the board. Students had to come up with the mean, median, and mode for each color and had to decide which of the data sets to use if they had an outlier or not.



They had to look back at their data and examine which factory their set of M&M's came from. We also talked about what might be different from their graphs to ours and how you might be able to tell the difference between each plant.

This was a great activity for students, they were excited because they got to share and eat their M&M's when they were done.