How Many Licks Does it Take to
Get to the Center of a Blow Pop ?
We bought 10 blow pops from one store, flavors at
random, and started to lick one side consistently until
we reached the center.
Meaning until the tongue was able to detect the
smallest piece of gum.
Cherry, Grape, Sour Apple, Strawberry, & Watermelon
Sample/ Population of Interest
We entered in the website www.kgb.com the
following question:


“how many licks does it take to get to the center of a blow
pop?”


The anonymous post replied 364.
A member of our group sat and licked one side of a
blow pop repeatedly until the gum was detectable to
the tongue and the processes was repeated 10X.
Data Collection Process
We are not really sure how confident we are with
our data being a good sample of the population,
because we have no variety. According to how we
chose our blow pops, provides the reason for the
slight discretion.
Our control throughout the experiment was to go
to one store and choose blow pops with our eyes
closed out of one batch of evenly distributed flavor
blow pops. If we would have gone to different stores
to purchase the blow pops we would have had more
variety and maybe would’ve been more confident
whether our data represents a good sample of the
population.
Confidence
Number of Licks
Mean= 210.3
Standard Deviation= 17.1
Five Number Summary:
Min- 186
Q1-198.5
Med- 206
Q3- 228
Max- 238
211
200
198
234
228
186
212
195
201
238
Data Representation
250
225
200
175
150
125
100
75
50
25
0
q1
min
median
max
q3
licks
Box plot
Shape- Our box plot indicates that the data is fairly
skewed to the right, but the values display a pattern
of larger numbers.
Outlier- Equations
Q3-Q1=IQR; 228-198=30
Q3+1.5(IQR); 228+1.5(30)=273
Q1-1.5(IQR); 198-1.5(30)=153
According to the equations above we have no outliers.
Center- According to our mean and median since
they’re very close the distribution is approximately
normal.
Spread- the spread is from 198 to 238. The Q1 is really
close to the median almost overlapping.
Description of Graph
Hypothesis
Ho:µ=364, The average licks for a blow pop is 364.
Ha:µ<364, The average licks for a blow pop is less than
364.
Significance Lev. ( 0.5) with a sample of 10
Conditions for T-test
1. We do not know if the data comes from an SRS, so we
can not generalize about the population.
2. Since n<15, we did a NPP and our data is
approximately normal.
x   T-formula
t 
s
n
Inference Procedures
210.3  364
t
17.7
10
t=-27.487
P value=0.0000000002708,
According to TI-84 Texas Instrument.
Due to the extremely small p value we have
enough evidence to reject Ho, meaning the
average licks for a blow pop is less than 364.
How many licks does it take to get to the center
of a blow pop?
On average it takes about 210 licks to get to the
center of a blow pop.
Calculations
According to our 95% confidence interval, we
have confirmed that we should reject Ho. Our
confidence interval was…
T= -27.487
s
x t*
n
x = 210.3
s=17.7
n=10
17.7
210.3  27.487
10
Answer is 197.65 to 222.95,
Therefore 210 is a valid
estimation.
Confidence Interval
Our question was How many licks does it take to get to the
center of a blow pop?
We collected our data by buying 10 blow pops at
random from one store out of a evenly distributed batch
and carefully licking each one on one side of the blow pop
until the bubble gum in the middle was detectable by the
tongue.
Our weakness was that we only went to one store for
the blow pops and our strengths was that we licked each
sucker on one side and kept up with the number of licks.
A error that could have occurred was that our source
number of licks could’ve been false and that could’ve
thrown off our average, invalidating our conclusion. One of
the Lurking variables would be the size of an individuals
tongue, if the tongue is larger then it could probably
require less licks than a person with a smaller tongue.
Reflection
The End…