candies

Welcome back! Today we are going to play with M&Ms! First, get any pack of M&Ms. Open it up, without eating ANY of them, and organize them into different colors. In my package, I have 4 red M&Ms, 5 blue M&Ms, 4 brown M&Ms, 3 green M&Ms, and 2 yellow M&Ms.

Now put the M&Ms in order of number (from lowest to highest). For example, my line would look like this:
2 YELLOWS 3 GREENS 4 REDS 4 BROWNS 5 BLUES

To find the average (or mean) number of M&Ms in each color category, you add up all of the M&Ms and divide by the number of categories! Here is what that will look like for my package of M&Ms.

2 + 3 + 4 + 4 + 5 =18 total M&Ms
________________________ = an average of 3.6 M&MS

1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 =5 total categories

Using your same order of lowest to highest, we will find the median, or middle of the M&Ms. In my case, 4 REDS would be the middle of my line. How did I figure that out? I started from the outsides of blue and yellow and took the groups that were farthest away from the middle out of the line. After I took the blue and yellow away, it looked like this:

3 GREENS 4 REDS 4 BROWNS

I took away the two groups that were farthest from the middle away again. After I took the green and brown away, it looked like this:

4 REDS

Because I can't take away in more groups away from the middle, I am left with my reds. This means that the number of reds is my median, or my middle group.

Now arrange your M&Ms back how they were, in order from lowest to highest. We are now going to find the mode, which is the number that appears most in all of the groups. In my package of M&Ms, the numbers of each color are 2, 3, 4, 4, and 5. Which number appears the most amount of times? 4! The number 4 appears twice and all of the other numbers only appear once. This means that my package's mode is 4! What is the mode in your package?

Great work! Now you get to eat all of your M&Ms! Try to look for things around the house where you can find the mean, median, and mode!