1. Which Syrup do You Prefer?
The truth behind what people really want with their syrup.
By Tracee Schiebel, Robert Stanton, Claire Willey, and Katelyn Bowers

2. Purpose
Our purpose was to find the truth, do people prefer pure maple syrup or fake syrup. We let VVS tell us the story.

3. Design
We will investigate the preference between Wal-Mart Brand Regular Maple Syrup with Butter and Pure VVS FFA Maple Syrup (conveniently produced here at VVS). Mr. Frank Mitchell claims that “Wal-Mart brand Regular Maple Syrup with Butter is preferred over VVS FFA Maple Syrup.”

4. Hypothesis
In our sample, we tested whether or not people prefer the pure VVS FFA Maple syrup or Wal-Mart brand regular maple syrup with butter.
In which case, our null hypothesis becomes
Ho- p=50% which states there is no preference.
Our alternate hypothesis is H1- p<50% of people prefer Wal-Mart regular maple syrup with butter.

5. How we collected the data
The population we tested was the students, faculty, and teachers during the 5th 6th and 7th period lunches on 12/21/10.

6. The how…continued
Out of view, we poured samples of both pure and fake maple syrup.
Each type was poured into unmarked cups, separated by unmarked trays.
Anyone willing, was able to take a sample off of each tray and taste each one, we then asked which they preferred and they would tell us which tray.
Trays were switched at random to avoid bias.
A very attractive display was set up to bring interest in our direction.
After an opinion was expressed, we would record their name and which of the two syrups they preferred this was to avoid any duplicate votes or rigging. If a person attempted to sample a second time and vote again, we would not let them.

7. Really Exciting Calculations
Ho: p=50%
H1: p<50%
( )N=(66)(.3182)= >5 √
= R/N
( )N=(66)(.6818)= >5√
N=66
Z= p
R=21
√pq/n
=.3182
Z=( )/(√(.5)(.5)/66)=
=.6818
P(z< )=.0016
p=.5
.0016<.01
q=.5
Reject Ho
α=.01
It is improbable that there is no preference between pure maple syrup and Wal-Mart brand syrup with butter.

8. Margin of Error 95% Confidence Interval E=Z0.95( √(ˉˉˉˉˉˉˉ/n))66
This shows that there is a 5.73% margin of error.

9. 31.82% Of people preferred Wal-Mart brand with a 5.73% margin of error
Results
31.82% Of people preferred Wal-Mart brand with a 5.73% margin of error

10. Charts…. again

11. Conclusions
Our data displayed a very clear appreciation of pure maple syrup over fake. We rejected our null hypothesis that there is no preference between the pure and fake maple syrup.

12. Evaluation
Our plan worked exceedingly well due to a group with a wide distribution of capabilities. We were able to disprove Mr. Frank Mitchell’s claim.
We reached an answer with very few problems.

13. Problems
We tried to reach a higher amount of samples but were unable too gain enough attention. Especially since many students had left school early due to an impending school break.
We didn’t have time to do another school sample before break.

14. Biases
Biases we could have avoided were having members of the FFA sample because they are more knowledgeable of maple syrup and whether or not they chose to pick pure despite their true preference in aims to promote the school’s product.
A bias we could not avoid is that the members of our school are more exposed to the pure maple syrup and have a higher chance of recognizing the difference in syrups before even trying them.
With Tracee as a member of the VVS FFA, some people sampling may have felt obligated to vote pro-pure maple syrup.

15. Modifications
A change we could have made was to execute a double-blind experiment using people unknowing of the difference as our samplers while we stood out of way to observe and record. This would help to prevent any possible bias in any part of our system.
We could have collected more samples over a longer period of time to gain a more accurate result.
We could have used black sample cups in order to avoid letting samplers see the difference in color of the samples.
We could have sampled outside of our community instead of our school due to biases caused by exposure to pure maple syrup.
We could have advertised that we were sampling to more people in order to get a larger sample.
We could have done our sampling on a different day since many people were not in school because it was the day before break.

16. Works Cited
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17. Works Cited, Continued Mr. Frank Mitchell Picture –