Halloween Candy Trial

Happy Halloween everybody!

This year I had been planning to dress up as Clippy, the helpful persistant Microsoft Paper Clip, but the halloween party I was invited to ended up getting canceled. Such a shame, as I had been looking forward to walking up to people and trying to help them with various tasks that they weren’t doing.

“Hi. It looks like you might be trying to dip your chip into your beer. Would you like some help?”
“Oh, hello there. It looks like you’re trying to write a text to an exgirlfriend. Would you like help?”

Anyway, I didn’t end up dressing up and instead I just gave candy away at home – but why not use this as an opportunity for a one on one battle between two different candy bars.

SNICKERS VS TWIX CAGE MATCH

I bought two boxes of the largest candy bars I could find in two varieties: Snickers and Twix

When the kids came to the door, I offered them a choice of one or the other. What happened?!? First, let’s run basic stats on the candy bars.

Snickers: 3.29oz (93.3g)
Package Dimensions: 150mm x 32mm x 27mm
Calories: 280
Approx Density: 717kg/m^3

Twix: 1.79oz (50.7g)
Package Dimensions: 120mm x 45mm x 20mm
Calories: 250
Approx Density: 469kg/m^3

Notes: At 150mm in length the snickers is much more of a king sized bar than the twix. The packaging also seems more densely packed because they don’t need to split the candy bar into two different bars like Twix.

Hypothesis:
With the significant size and density advantage of the Snickers coupled with the far superior branding strategy, I submit that more snickers will be taken by Halloween trick or treaters.

Data Gathered:
Snickers taken: 23
Twix taken:23

Conclusion:
WHOA! I was WAY OFF. Against all odds, the Twix were chosen with the same frequency as the Snickers! What a shocker! While the tally is a statistical dead heat, I think Twix pulled off a BIG win here. Volume of chocolate is a major factor and that Twix defeated Snicker’s size advantage is very telling. My highly unscientific experiment suggests that Twix is the preferred candy bar.

A few potential areas of error in my study:

1. The boxes came in different sizes. I had 24 snickers and 36 twix. As the snickers began to dwindle down there was the potential that a kid might have been socially pressured not to take the last remaining Snickers. However, countering this suggestion, when goaded to take the last one, a tiny superhero retorted “No way, I want a Twix”
2. I’m fairly certain that a vampire grabbed two Snickers while I was distracted by a princess that was struggling up the stairs. My data might be flawed.
3. One parent took a candy bar. Who does that?!? Parents, the candy is for the kids!
4. As everyone knows, a sample size less than 30 is pretty weaksauce. T-Statistics are sooooo amateur.