Graphing M&M's

Hey guys! Today I want to talk about graphing data, I know it’s so fun, just wait till you read about it! This in-class activity was not only a great learning experience, but it was also tasty. Our instructor gave each person their own mini bag of m&m’s and we predicted what colors we thought were going to occur the least and most often. Then we all opened our bags and recorded our data using a pictograph. Next, we recorded our class data using a dot plot. Lastly, we constructed another pictograph and bar graph to finish showing our class data.

This activity was really intriguing because we got to explore different types of graphs while eating m&m’s and who could complain about that? I learned that pictographs are fairly easy to make, can handle large sets of data, and are visually appealing. Pictographs can be hard to read, like when we used a pictograph to represent the class data. On our pictograph each circle represented ten m&m’s and you had to fill the circle a tiny bit to represent a number smaller than ten which could become misleading and hard to read. The dot plots were easy for us to see the individual data and the extremes which was great when representing our class data. Although, it took a while to total all the data and you had to be consistent with the size of your x’s which can be tricky. Lastly, my personal favorite the bar graph which is easy to read and we were able to compare our data. However, bar graphs can be hard to make and they need explanations which can be time consuming. This activity was a great way to learn how to construct graphs and what graph will best represent your data. If you want to learn more about pictographs, dot plots, and bar graphs visit these links. Once you learn more, you can explore more on the site and even create your own graph! Get graphing and have fun! :)