Candy counting experiment

Make a "bar graph" with different colored candies. Suitable for 3+.

Child counting M&Ms

Hypothesis

How many different colors of candy are there in the bag of candy? Do you think there are the same number of each color?

Materials

• 

  1+ (small) bags of candy

• 

  1+ sheets of paper

• 

  1 writing implement

Methods

1. Optional: Draw a graph with the # of rows for each color of candy on a piece of paper
2. Line up the candies so that a single color is in each row
3. Count the number of candies in each row

Replication

Optional: Repeat the experiment again with a different bag of the same candy of the same size. This is called a trial.

Results

For preschool aged children

Which color candy was most common? Which color candy was least common?

Did you eat any candies before the experiment was over? How might that have affected the results?

If you did additional trials, did you get the same number of candies for each color in the second trial?

For primary school aged children

Calculate the percentage of each color of candy for each bag.

Then calculate the average percentage of each color across all trials.

For secondary school aged children

Perform a Pearson's chi-square test