We decided to usher in 2000 with a special project.
M & M candies seemed to be the most popular choice since we could eat them after we were finished. Our project was divided into two steps.
    We first made an educated guess as to how many candies we would need. Then we actually opened bags of M & M's to see how close our guesses were to the actual number of candy in each bag. We also hypothesized as to what the collation was for each color. Many of us were "surprised" about the results.

    The class felt that there would be approximately 34 M&M's in each bag. That meant that we would need about 58 packages of the candy to get our 2000.

Our collation guesses were almost even. No one felt that there would be a drastic difference of colors in each bag.

    Here's what really happened. The students were initially surprised to find out that their guess of 34 M&M's per bag was off by more than 30! The average number in each bag was about 65 candies per bag. That meant that instead of 58 packages, we would need only 31. The next surprise was our collation. Below are the results.

  As you can see, there was not an equal collation of candy colors. What about your area? We would like to know if all M&M candy bags have the same amount of colors that we found. Try this activity and let us know at Tterrific119@yahoo.com.

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