Skittles & Measures of Center

I'm pretty sure you have seen this activity before! It's nothing new. However, I gave it an updated spin using Google Suite.

I created a HyperDoc where students read an article and collaborate to complete a Google Sheet. The article claims that there are more yellow skittles in each package. Well, we all know, since it is on the internet - it's true. 😂

Well, we decided to do our own experiment. I did spend some $ on this activity, but I ordered the skittles from Amazon, and feel that I saved some money that way.

I would typically do this in groups of 2, but I have a small class this year, and I wanted more data. I had each student count the number of red, yellow, green, purple, and orange skittles in each bag. I shared the Google Sheet so that each student could edit, and they typed in the data from their bag. I love using Google as a collaboration tool.

Once all students were finished, I had them go back to the Google Doc and complete the table using the class data. I didn't tell them at first how Google Sheets could do all of these calculations. After the first color, one student was on a mission to figure out a better way - and used Google search!

I know that this lesson is about the students calculating mean, median, and mode, but I feel like being able to use technology is just as important. Other students started to catch on, and finally the class was utilizing the explore tool in Google Sheets. I was so proud! (From formative assessment early this morning, I knew that all students were masters at measures of central tendency, so this didn't bother me!)

Using the data, the students answered questions on the HyperDoc and shared their copy with me. The class data showed that out of our batch of skittles - there were more orange skittles! This brings up a great discussion - is this always true? Does it have anything to do with our sample? What could we have done differently? What does the mean tell us about our data? Overall, I would say that it was a great lesson.

~RJ

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