M&M's: A Statistical Breakdown of Colors (a.k.a. Working Hard, or Hardly Working?)

Okay folks, once again, it's time for Mr. Goodbar's melding of the delicious candy world with the

disturbing universe of numbers. (As you may recall, he explored the economics of M&M's in a past entry.) This time he's done a review of the colors of M&M's. He had the results laid out all nicey-nice in a chart, but I can't figure out how to lay it out in Blogger. Anyhow, here ya go. Take it away, Mr. Goodbar:

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I sampled 19 bags of Peanut M&Ms from the vending machine down the hall between 3/1/09 and 5/27/09. The average number of m's per bag was 22, with Orange being the most plentiful color and brown, surprisingly, the least. Here's the statistical breakdown:

Orange
Average: 5.05
23%
Max: 9
Min: 2
Mode: 4

Blue
Average: 4.63
21%
Max: 8
Min: 2
Mode: 4

Yellow
Average: 3.89
18%
Max: 7
Min: 1
Mode: 5

Green
Average: 4.00
18%
Max: 8
Min: 0
Mode: 4

Red
Average: 2.63
12%
Max: 5
Min: 0
Mode: 3

Brown
Average: 1.79
8%
Max: 4
Min: 0
Mode: 2

I got two bags with siamesed m's -- one was red, and the other was blue. In both cases, I counted them as 2. Only one bag had a broken m in it -- a yellow one. I know it wasn't broken in transport because only half of the m was there.

About 1/3 of the bags had an m with an "off" taste. One bag had 4, and I felt like I'd been ripped off. Come on, guys -- just because we can't see the peanut doesn't mean we can't taste it!

I'm going to keep this little experiment up over the course of 2009 to see how things look when the sample gets larger. Once an accountant, always an accountant, apparently.

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I have no idea what Max, Min and Mode mean. All I know is that I loves me some peanut M&M's!