The grade 4 Math textbook has an activity where the students determine what color occurs most often in a package of coloured candies. Rather than opening an actual box of Smarties, the students used a web based random number generator to create 50 random numbers between 1 and 8. Each number was equated to a different colour. For example, number 1 = blue, 2 = brown, 3 = green, and so on. The students then tallied up the number of each colour, and used a spreadsheet program to create a bar graph to illustrate the results.

Step 1: generating 50 random numbers between 1 and 8

The students used a random number generator to create 50 random numbers between 1 and 8.

Step 2: equating each number from 1 to 8 with a colour, and counting the number of times each colour occurs in the sample of 50.

Step 3: using a spreadsheet program to create a bar graph to illustrate the results.