Ricardo Robles

MATH 1040
Term Project
Skittles Report
Report Introduction
This report consists of data collected by my 1040 Math class that is based on the amount
of Skittles contained in a standard 2.17-ounce bag. The Skittles are then separated into their
respective colors and sorted then the data is collected onto a spreadsheet where we can interpret
the data in many ways including pie charts, graphs and many other methods of data
interpretation.
Organizing and Displaying Categorical Data: Colors

Skittle Count (Class)

191.000; 19%

213.000; 21%

210.000; 21%

195.000; 19%

211.000; 21%
Yellow

Orange

Green

Purple

Red

Skittle Count (Self)

8.000; 14%

11.000; 19%

8.000; 14%

14.000; 25%

16.000; 28%
Yellow

Orange

Green

Purple

Red

The following data shows that the colors are for the most part equal with Yellow being
the most abundant by only a few skittles for the entire class. However, when you look at the data
for only self it shows that there is a larger disparity of colors with Green having double the
amount of Yellow and Orange. From my observation, I can see that a larger sample size will lead
to less disparities in data while a small sample size can make data misleading.
Organizing and Displaying Quantitative Data: The Number of Candies per Bag

Skittles Frequency Histogram

12
10
8
6

Number of Bags

4
2
0

Skittles Total

Standard Deviation = 2.42

Mean = 60
The following data shows that most bags contained between 50 and 69 skittles with the least
amount of Skittles in a bag being 56 and the most at 64. I expected the total number of Skittles
to be similar across all bags and the data shows that they are mostly the same in the amount of
Skittles. My bag contained 57 Skittles which was below average and one of the lowest amounts
in the 17 samples.
Reflection
Looking at the two types of data it looks like categorical data would be more useful in a
project such as this where the amount of candies in each bag will be mostly the same but the
colors will have more variation which is where a pie chart would help in interpreting this data.
However I think that the 5 number summary is very useful in many situations, just not in this one
because the amount of candies will be mostly the same.

Confidence Intervals
The purpose of confidence intervals is to show a range that our population proportion will
be true if it were to fall on them.

For the true proportion of yellow candies, it can be seen that if we were to buy a bag of
Skittles, then we can expect that the proportion of yellow candies would fall between -.053 and .
471.
For the true mean number of candies per bag, we can see that if we were to buy 16 bags
of Skittles, we can expect that the number of candies will fall between 62 and 59. (If we round
up)
For the standard deviation of number of candies per bag, it can be seen that if we were to
buy 16 bags of skittles, then we can expect that the number of candies will vary in amount by 2
to 5 Skittles (If we round up)

Hypothesis Tests
The purpose of a hypothesis test is to test to see if there is enough evidence to make a
statistical claim true.

For the .05 significance level we can conclude that there is not sufficient evidence to
support the claim that 20% of all Skittles are red

For the .01 significance level we can conclude that there is not sufficient evidence to
support the claim that the mean number of candies in a bag is 55.
Reflection
The samples did not meet any of the conditions. I feel that I may have made a few errors
when calculating the standard deviation and mean at the beginning of the project. Because of
these errors all of the calculations may have been inaccurate. I feel that having more samples
may improve the overall quality of the data and as a result the entire project may have been more
accurate.