Our Statistical Investigation - Lolly Scramble

Over the last two weeks we have been learning about statistics. We used tally graphs and pictographs to investigate our birthdays, the colour of our eyes, how we came to school and our Smarts.

Our class investigation was looking at the different lollies in the Pascall Lolly Scramble packets. First we completed a tally chart and a pictograph for a sample packet then we made statements based on our data.

• There is only 1 Orange Fruit Burst.
• There are 3 each of the Green, Purple and Red Fruit Bursts.
• There were more Milkshakes than any other type of lolly.
• There are fewer Minties than pink caramels.
• There were no Yellow Fruit Bursts! Brooke M pointed out that there was a picture on the packet showing the Yellow Fruit Bursts and it was not right that there were none inside. 

Use the photo below to make up some of your own statements.

We decided to look at some more packets in our groups to see if there were similar problems with the mix of lollies. Each group completed their own tally chart and bar graph. Then we combined this on one column graph using Excel to show what we found out. The Circles data is red, the Triangles is yellow and the Octagons is green. We found out some interesting things and made some more statements based on the data.

• Three packets had one type of lolly missing.
• Four of the three packets had 30 lollies, but one packet had only 29.
• Milkshakes were the most common lolly in most of the packets.

We think that there should be the same number of each type of lolly in the packets and that maybe the machine that fills the packets is broken. Our next step is to write to Pascalls. We will include a copy of our graph.