Material Detail

In this hands-on activity, created by Dex Whittinghill of Rowan University, students count the number of chips in cookies in order to carry out an independent samples t-test to see if Chips Ahoy® cookies have a higher, lower, or different mean number of chips per cookie than a supermarket brand. First there is a class discussion that can include concepts about random samples, independence of samples, recently covered tests, comparing two parameters with null and alternative hypotheses, what it means to be a chip in a cookie, how to break up the cookies to count chips, and of course a class consensus on the hypotheses to be tested. Second the students count the number of chips in a one cookie from each brand, and report their observations to the instructor. Third, the instructor develops the independent sample t-test statistic. Fourth, the students carry out (individually or as a class) the hypothesis test, checking the assumptions on sample-size/population-shape.

Disciplines:

• Mathematics and Statistics  / Statistics and Probability