This lesson was very fun for my students, despite the fact that we had to go outside to eat the M&Ms (very strict Lab Safety Rules in my classroom). The students were especially interested in the fact that I shared with them about how there weren't always blue M&Ms. There are cute videos on YouTube with the ads from TV back then! We were able to finish the lesson with the optional pizza intro in two 45 minute class periods. The class that chose to sample 20 M&Ms per group came much closer to the actual values than the class that sampled only 10 M&Ms.
Wed, 05/01/2013 - 18:29
I kind of steered my kids towards 10 too... I was worried about everything taking longer with 20 (my kids have weak math skills so 10 as the denominator makes everything faster & easier.) Maybe next year I'll try letting them change things up a bit. The comparison of 20 versus 10 would be interesting.
Sat, 04/27/2013 - 15:14
That's great that you could bring in some of the "vintage" advertisements. I would have posted the results of the two classes, the 10 and 20 unit sample sizes to share and compare the results. I don't know why, but I kind of steered my class into choosing a 10 sample size. Perhaps because that is what we did in the workshop.