M&M lab report (stats)

M&M Statistics/A Chi Square Analysis Have you ever wondered why the package of M&Ms you just bought never seems to have enough of your favorite color? Or, why is it that you always seem to get the package of mostly brown M&Ms? What's going on at the Mars Company? Is the number of the different colors of M&Ms in a package really different from one package to the next, or does the Mars Company do something to ensure that each package gets the correct number of each color of M&M? Here's some information from the M&M website: % color Plain Peanut Crispy Minis Peanut Butter Almond Brown 13% 12% 17% 13% 10% 10% Yellow 14% 15% 17% 13% 20% 20% Red 13% 12% 17% 12% 10% 10% Green 16% 15% 16% 12% 20% 20% Blue 24% 23% 17% 25% 20% 20% Orange 20% 23% 16% 25% 20% 20% One way that we could determine if the Mars Co. is true to its word is to sample a package of M&Ms and do a type of statistical test known as a "goodness of fit" test. This type of statistical test allows us to determine if any differences between our observed measurements (counts of colors from our M&M sample) and our expected (what the Mars Co. claims) are simply due to chance or some other reason (i.e. the Mars company's sorters aren't doing a very good job of putting the correct number of M&M's in each package). The goodness of fit test we will be using is called a Chi Square (X?) Analysis. We will be calculating a statistical value and using a table to determine the probability that any difference between observed data and expected data is due to chance alone.We begin by stating the null hypothesis. A null hypothesis is the prediction that something is not present, that a treatment will have no effect, or that there is no difference between treatment and control. Another way of saying this is the hypothesis that an observed pattern of data and an expected pattern are effectively the same, differing only by chance, not because they are truly different. What is our null hypothesis for this experiment? The null hypothesis is there will be about 9 M&M's per color (9 brown, 9 yellow, 9 red, 9 green, 9 blue, and 9 orange). Our null hypothesis will be accepted, the results will not be statistically significant. To test this hypothesis, we will need to calculate the X- statistic, which is calculated in the following way: X' = E (0 - E)- E where O is the observed (actual count) and E is the expected number for each color category. The main thing to note about this formula is that, when all else is equal, the value of X' increases as the difference between the observed and expected values increase. On to it! 1. Lay out a large sheet of paper-you'll be sorting M&Ms on this.AP Biology: Chi-Squared Lab 2. Open up a bag of M&Ms 3. DO NOT EAT ANY OF THE M&M'S (for now!) 4. Separate the M&M's into color categories and count the number of each color of M&M you have. 5. Record your counts in Data Chart 1. 6. Determine the Chi square value for your data. Data Color Categories Chart 1 Brown Blue Orange Green Red Yellow Total Observed 5 13 10 15 13 1 57 o Expected 7 14 11 9 7 56 (e) Difference -2 -1 -1 6 6 -7 (o-e) Difference 4 1 36 36 49 Squared (o-e)2 (o-e)-/e .57 07 09 1 19 6.12 E (d'/e) = 11.04 X2 You may eat now!!! @Now you must determine the probability that the difference bet'iveen the observed and expected values occurred simply by chance. The procedure is to compare the calculated value of the chisquare to the appropriate value in the table below. First examine the table. Note the term \"degrees of freedom". For this statistical test the degrees of freedom equal the number of classes {i.e. color categories) minus one: degrees of freedom = number of categories 1 In your l-ldtM experiment. what is the number of degrees of freedom? 3' The reason why it is important to consider degrees of freedom is that the value of the chisquare statistic is calculated as the sum of the squared deviations for all classes. The natural increase in the value of chisquare with an increase in classes must be taken into account. Scan across the row corresponding to your degrees of freedom. Values of the chi-square are given for several diHerent probabilities. ranging om 0.90 on the left to 0.01 on the right. Note that the chi-square increases as the nrobabilitv decreases. Prob ability mum" mm 5 Notice that a chisquare value as large as 1.61 1.yould be expected by chance in 9096 of the cases: 1.yhereas one as large as 15.09 would only be expected by chance in 1% of the cases. Stated another 1.yay. it is more likely that 1'I'TI1-I11TI'IJT 5! 11 AP Biology: Chi-Squared Lab willing to say that if their probability of getting the observed deviation from the expected results by chance is greater than 0.05 (5%), then we can accept the null hypothesis. In other words, there is really no difference in actual ratios.......any differences we see between what Mars claims and what is actually in a bag of M&Ms just happened by chance sampling error. Five percent! That is not much, but it's good enough for a scientist. If however, the probability of getting the observed deviation from the expected results by chance is less than 0.05 (5%) then we should reject the null hypothesis. In other words, for our study, there is a significant difference in M&M color ratios between actual store-bought bags of M&Ms and what the Mars Co. claims are the actual ratios. Stated another way...any differences we see between what Mars claims and what is actually in a bag of M&Ms did not just happen by chance sampling error. The following information should be in your conclusion. Based on your individual sample, should you accept or reject the null hypothesis? Why? If you rejected your null hypothesis, what might be some explanations for your outcome? Now that you completed this chi-square test for your data, let's do it for the entire class, as if we had one huge bag of M&Ms. Using the information reported on the board, complete Data Chart 2. Data Color Categories Chart 2 Brown Blue Orange Green Red Yellow Total Observed 115 160 133 163 114 50 734 Expected 95 176 147 117 95 103 733Deviation (difference 4% The following also should be discussed in your conclusion. o Based on the class data? should you accept or reject the null hypothesis?L ll.l|r"h1.-"_"l o If you rejected the null hypothesis based on the class data: what might be some of the explanations for your outcome? 0 If you accepted the null hypothesis= how do you explain firparticularly if you rejected the null based on Individual group data? What is the purpose of collecting data otn the entire group?I