Taya Gordon

Math 1040
2/23/16
Term Project
Organizing Data
Have you ever wondered just how many candies there are, and how many of each flavor
in a skittles bag? Throughout this term project we will find the answer to this question. Everyone
in my class has purchased an average size (2.17 oz) bag of original skittles. We each counted
how many candies there were of each flavor. To complete this project I will be using all of the
data that had been compiled together.
The data presented by these graphs are what I expected. I did expect that the amount of
flavors were going to be about even. My bag of candies does not reflect on the classes. Mine is

more skewed instead of being more evenly distributed.

My Data

Summary of Candies in Each Bag: Mean:

59.1
Standard Deviation: 3.61
5 Number Summary: 49, 57.5, 60, 62, 67

The shape of the distribution is not normal; it is skewed to the left, and is not
asymmetrical. It is not what I expected. I thought that since each bag weighed exactly the same,
there would be an equal amount in each bag. My bag of candies does somewhat correlate with
the rest of the class, meaning that it is with the usual two standard deviations from themean, the
amount of candies in my bag are a lot less than the average though.
Number of Candies in My Bag: 52
Total Number of Bags in Sample: 40
Categorical data uses names while quantitate data uses numbers. Bar charts and pie charts
make sense with categorical data. You would not be able to construct a frequency histogram with
categorical data so that would not make sense, but a frequency histogram and boxplot would
make sense using quantitative data.
Confidence Interval Estimates
A confidence interval is an estimate that the true point is in a certain rage of numbers with a
particular level of confidence.
For the first confidence interval estimate for the true proportion of yellow candies showed that
we are 99% confident that the true proportion of yellow candies are anywhere between .16705
and .20842.
The second confidence interval estimate for the true mean number of candies in each bag
resulted that we are 95% confident that the true mean number of candies per bag is between
57.945 and 60.255.

The last confidence interval estimate for the standard deviation of the number of candies per bag
showed that we are 98% confident that the standard deviation lies between 2.8 and 4.8.
Hypothesis Tests
A hypothesis test is used to show if there is significant evidence to support or reject a claim.
The first hypothesis test tested a claim that 20% of all Skittles are red, which is the null
hypothesis. The opposite or alternative hypothesis is that 20% of Skittles are not red. By the
evidence provided by this hypothesis we can conclude that there is not enough evidence to
support the claim that 20% of Skittles are red.
The second hypothesis test tested the claim that the mean number of candies per bag is greater
than 55, which is the alternative hypothesis. The null hypothesis is that the mean number of
candies per bag is 55. From this test the evidence leads me to conclude that the mean number of
candies per bag is greater than 55, rejecting the null hypothesis.
Reflection
The requirements to perform a confidence interval are; they have to be a simple random
sample and the population has to be normally distributed or n (number of samples) have to be
greater than 30. The requirements to conduct a hypothesis test are: it must be a simple random
sample, each sample point can result in two possible outcomes (success or failure), the sample
includes at least 10 failures and 10 successes, and the population is at least 20 times as large as
the sample size. A possible factor that could result in possible errors is students miscounting the
number of colors in this bag of skittles. The sampling method could be improved by increasing
the population and randomly selecting what bags would be tested. In conclusion the interval
estimates and hypothesis testing gave accurate information on the true mean, standard deviation,
and proportions of Skittles.