Appendicies

Appendix 1: External Resources for Teaching and Learning Statisics

The papers and websites gathered here provide examples of studies using M&Ms (and other similar items) to illustrate concepts in the broad area of data analysis.

  1. Canaes, L. S.; Brancalion, M. L.; Rossi, A. V.; Rath, S. “Using Candy Samples to Learn about Sampling Techniques and Statistical Data Evaluation,” J. Chem. Educ. 2008, 85, 1083–1088.
  2. Diamond, J. J. “Using Peanut M&M’s in an Introductory Statistics Class Illustrate Binomial Properties,” The Statistics Teacher Network, 2010, 75, 2–4.
  3. Downey, A. B. Think Bayes, Green Tea Press.
  4. Duncan, D. R.; Litwiller, B. H. “Milk Chocolate M&M Color Distribution: A Chi-Square Experience, Illinois Mathematics Teacher, 2008, Spring, 32–33.
  5. Fricker, R. D. Jr. “The Mysterious Case of the Blue M&Ms®,” Chance 1996, 9(4), 19–22.
  6. Froelich, A. G.; Stephenson, W. R. “How Much do M&M’s Weigh?” Teaching Statistics, 2012, 35, 14–20.
  7. Holland, E. T.; Manley, G.; Chiba, T.; Ramos, R.; Mochrie, S.; Frederick, J. “Infectious Chocolate Joy with a Side of Poisson Statistics: An Activity Connecting Life Science Students with Subtle Physics Concepts.”
  8. Johnson, R. W. “Testing Colour Proportion of M&lMs,” Teaching Statistics, 1993, 15, 2–4.
  9. Juneau, J.; Juneau, K. R.; Coates, E. R. “A Sweet Demonstration of Statistical Hypothesis Testing”
  10. Lee, H. K. H. “Chocolate Chip Cookies as a Teaching Aid,” The American Statistician 2007, 61(4), 1–5.
  11. Lin, T.; Sanders, M. S. “A Sweet Way to Learn DoE,” Quality Progress, 2006, February, 88.
  12. Peterson, I. “A Taste for M&M’s.”
  13. Ross, M. R. “A Classroom Exercise in Sampling Techniques,” J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 1015–1016.
  14. Schwartz, T. A. “Teaching Principles of One-Way Analysis of Variance Using M&M’s Candy,” J. Stats. Educ. 2013, 21.
  15. Stat Monkey “m&m Statistics Activities.”
  16. Staub, N. L. “Teaching Evolutionary Mechanisms: Genetic Drift and M&M’s®,” BioScience, 2002, 52, 373–377.
  17. University of Puget Sound Data Hoard.
  18. Xu-Friedman, M. A. “Illustrating Concepts of Quantal Analysis with an Intuitive Classroom Model,” Adv. Physiol. Educ. 2013, 37, 112–116.

In addition to the many standard textbooks used in introductory and advanced courses in analytical chemistry, these references introduce additional ways to visualize, to summarize, to model, and to draw conclusions from data.

  1. Boslaugh, S. Statistics in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition, O’Reilly: Sebastopol, CA, 2013.
  2. Harvey, D. T. Analytical Chemistry 2.0.
  3. Larose, D. T.; Larose, C. D. Discovering Knowledge in Data, 2nd Edition, Wiley: Hoboken, NJ, 2014.
  4. Miller, J. C.; Miller, J.N. Statistics and Chemometrics for Analytical Chemistry, Pearson: Essex, England, 2010.
  5. Robbins, N. Creating More Effective Graphs, Chart House: Wayne, NJ, 2013.
  6. van Belle, G. Statistical Rules of Thumb, 2nd Edition, Wiley: Hoboken, NJ, 2008.