Histograms and Mexican Candy - Lorena Aguilera

Hi everyone! My name is professor Aguilera and today we are going to learn about statistics, specifically about how to make a histogram using Mexican candy as an example.

First, we will start with some definitions:

Statistics: the science of collecting, organizing, and interpreting data to describe or summarize something.

Population: the set of people or things being studied.

Sample: subset of the population from which the raw data are obtained.

Frequency table: table showing the number of times that each data point appears.

Histogram: bar graph for quantitative data.

Now that we know those concepts, let’s learn about Mexican candy:

Mexico is a big country with many states and several regions, all of them having specific ways of preparing food, drinks, and candy. Some of the recipes come from before the conquest, and they show different aspects of our culture. In this class I will talk about 5 of the most famous types of Mexican candy, or “dulces Mexicanos” as we call them.

Palanquetas: they are usually made with peanuts and honey or sugar.

Ate: Ate is made with different type of fruits, like strawberry and guava, and they have a gooey consistency.

Glorias: it is a candy made with burnt milk, and the literal translation would be “glory”; they are named like that because people say that’s what you feel when you eat them.

Alegrias: this is a type of candy made with amaranth and honey. Amaranth is an ingredient that was used in religious Aztec ceremonies, so this type of candy has been around for a long time. Alegria means “happiness” in Spanish.

Cocada: cocadas are a very popular type of candy all around Mexico, and it’s made with coconut pulp.

Now, let’s combine statistics and Mexican candy to create a histogram.

It would be hard to ask the entire Mexican population about what type of candy they prefer, which is why researchers use “samples” when collecting data. In this case, I asked 12 of my friends from Mexico about their favorite candy; which will be my sample. The raw data I got is:

Gloria, alegria, palanqueta, Gloria, cocada, ate, ate, alegria, alegria, cocada, Gloria, alegria

With that set of raw data we can then create a frequency table, which include the data, frequency and the relative frequency. We can get the relative frequency by dividing the frequency with the sample, in this case, 12.

Type of candy	Frequency	Relative Frequency
Gloria	3	3/12=0.25=25%
Palanqueta	1	1/12=8.3%
Alegria	4	4/12=33.3%
Cocada	2	2/12=16.6%
Ate	2	2/12=16.6%

Now that we have the frequency table, we can start drawing the histogram. Using graph paper can be helpful, and it is important to know that the frecuency goes in the y axis and the data goes in the x axis. The main idea is to represent how many times a particular candy was chosen. 

When creating a histogram, be sure that the width of each rectangle is equal. Also, the rectangles must be touching (this is the main difference from a bar graph)

The histogram should look like this: 

And that's it! I hope you enjoyed learning about histograms and Mexican candy!