M&M Colour Distribution Research Project
One of the funny things about being me is that I like to count things. One day I picked up a pack of M&Ms (my favourite candy) and there were no yellows, no oranges, and no reds.
That started to make me wonder what the colour distribution of M&Ms was like. So, I started to count them, at first on paper, then in a Appleworks spreadsheet (I know, I know), and then I built an online database from so I could enter them from anywhere (and, of course, show them easily on my blog).
Methodology:
Whenever I have bought a regular-sized (49 grams) bag of Peanut M&Ms, I would pour the contents out, and count them by colour and make note.Predominantly, the M&Ms have come from stores within two kilometres of home. I did not include broken M&Ms in the count unless there was enough of the broken M&M to make up most (75%) of a M&M.
The data below is generated on-the-fly from the database to ensure the freshest possible results and compare them to what official ratios (note: the link now goes to Archive.org after the M&M's site has been re-organized) should be (thanks Fluffysphere ).
Average number of M&Ms per package:
Some Totals:
339 bags of M&Ms, containing 7,524 M&Ms, an average of 22.19 M&Ms per bag.
Brown: 918 Blue: 1,615 Green: 1,203 Yellow: 1,241 Orange: 1,601 Red: 946
If you are really are bored, you can look at all the colour information.
