Diet Soda Comparison Project

By Guillermo Rivas 4/20/2012

ABSTRACT I conducted an experiment using the three most popular diet sodas; Diet Coke Diet Pepsi and Coke Zero. The data was collected in the Taft College S.T.E.M research lab. A sample of 15 cans of diet soda for each brand was selected using the simple random sample technique. The main objective was to find out which diet soda was the heaviest and which manufacturer filled their cans with more soda. This information is useful to those individuals who want to get the most out of the products they purchase. I used 3 techniques to prove the information in this research to be true. First I used confidence intervals to show the true average of soda for each brand with 95% certainty. Second I used a one sample hypothesis test to compare Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi to find out which one filled their cans to the advertised 120z, and which brand filled their cans the most with 99% certainty. Third I used the Kruscal Wallis Technique to compare all three brands of diet soda to prove that there is in fact a brand of soda different from the rest. I found out that Diet Pepsi weighs the least of the three and fills their cans with more than 12oz, and Diet coke weighs the most and fills their cans with the most soda Therefore, Diet Coke is clearly the best value to consumers who want to get the most. INTRODUCTION Have you ever wondered which type of Diet soda weighs more? Or how well soda cans are filled and which one gives more soda. Maybe this only matters to those who want to get the best bang for their buck. Therefore, I will conduct an experiment to find out which type of diet soda weighs the most. And which soda is filled with more product than expected. I weighed the most popular diet sodas: Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, and Coke Zero. We believe Diet Coke weighs the most and Coke Zero weighs less since the name gives a hint of the value zero. Since Pepsi and Coke are

major competitors we will compare them to find out which one is filled with more product, but we believe coke is better filled and you get more soda.

METHODS The Data was collected in Mr. Jeans statistic class, at Taft College in the STEM research Lab. I used TC-STATS to generate a random sample of 15 for each type of soda. The simple random sample helped give all the Populations get an equal chance to get selected and through this, reduce bias. Each can of diet soda was labeled with a number according to its population size. The population size for Diet coke was 85, Diet Pepsi 96, and Coke Zero 72. I used a precise electronic scale and weighed my sample in Grams, in order to get an accurate weight. The data I collected was put into TC-STATS and sorted in columns according to the can number and weight of each can which was randomly selected. This data can be seen in the appendix under APPENDIX A. Results After organizing the data, I used TC-STATS to produce the five number summaries which consist of: Quartile 1, Median, Mean, Quartile 3 and the standard deviation. You can see this information on figure 1.2 presented below. However, for this particular Data I will compare only the mean and the median as these values best represent the weight comparison of the cola. Diet cokes Mean was 372.1807g, and its Median was 372.98g. Coke Zeros Mean is 372.1207 and its median was 372.06. Diet Pepsi's Mean was 369.8747 and the median was 369.64. To further give a better graphical display. I produced this stacked box plot using TC-STATS shown below in Figure 1.3, you can see for yourself the comparison between the three types of colas. As you

can see by the graph, Diet Pepsi has distribution that is skewed right and Diet Coke is skewed left and coke zero appears to be skewed left too.

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.3

To determine which Diet soda weighs more and which weighs less, I will do a confidence interval for all of the diet sodas I weighed. I want to know the average weight of the diet sodas with 95% accuracy; therefore I will use the procedure for Confidence intervals. In order to use the mean (average) the data has to be normal, and by looking at normal plots of the data I can see that it is not normal you can confirm this by looking at the normal scatter plots in the appendix under APPENDIX B. since our data is not normal I will use a sign test Using TC-Stats to determine the true Medians with 95% Accuracy. I am 95% sure that Diet Cokes Median is

between 370.8 and 373.54 Grams, Coke Zeros Median is between 371.06 and 372.71 Grams, and Diet Pepsis Median is between 368.27 and 370.39. Diet coke vs. Diet Pepsi We believe Diet Coke is filling their cans with more product than Diet Pepsi. Therefore I will do hypothesis test to determine which is filled with more product also the advertised ounces of each can of diet soda are 12 ounces or 340.19 grams and we will also use a confidence interval of 99% accuracy to see the true average and determine which soda fills with more product.. Our data is not normal as shown in Appendix B. Therefore, we will do a sign test for the medians. Our null hypothesis will be: Median = 340.19 and our Alternative hypothesis is Median is greater than 340.19 our alpha will be 0.05 and our confidence interval is .99. Diet cokes results were to reject the null hypothesis because the p-value was .00003 which is smaller than our alpha value and the Confidence interval for the true median is 369.95 and 373.73. Diet Pepsi results were to reject the null hypothesis because the p-value was .00003 and the confidence interval for the true median was 367.69 and 371.08. To further analyze my data I will compare all three diet sodas using a Kruscal Wallis test which allows me to see which diet sodas median is different from the rest and to determine if there is a difference in weight and if in fact one soda offers more product than the rest. I will use this procedure because my data is not normal as shown in Appendix B. Our null hypothesis is all medians are equal and our alternative hypothesis is at least one median is not equal and alpha will be 0.05. Our results for the Kruscal Wallis test are to reject the null hypothesis because our p-value is .0013 which is smaller than our alpha.

Discussion The overall results of our experiment are that: I am 95% sure that Diet Cokes Median is between 370.8 and 373.54 Grams, which makes it the heaviest, and Coke Zeros Median is between 371.06 and 372.71 Grams, which makes it the second heaviest and Diet Pepsis Median is between 368.27 and 370.39 which proves that it is the lightest of them all. When comparing Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi it is clear that they both fill their cans to 12oz or more because based on the hypothesis test I did for both sodas resulted in a p-value of .0003; therefore since it is larger than our alpha value of 0.05 we rejected the null hypothesis which stated that the median equaled to 340.19, so we have enough information to suggest that they are overfilling their soda cans. I am also 99% sure that Diet Coke fills their cans with more soda than Diet Pepsi because with 99% certainty the true Median for Diet coke is between 369.95 and 373.73, and Diet Pepsi true median is between 367.69 and 371.08. Overall, my hypothesis for the heaviest soda was proven to be true but coke zero was not the lightest of them all, in fact Diet Pepsi was the lightest. Also, my hypothesis that Diet coke was the heaviest and that it filled their cans with the most soda was proven to be true. Although, every attempt to eliminate bias from our sample, there is still the possibility of chance error, chance error is a type of bias that can occur during the measurement or weighting process. Overall, the above information was collected to the best of my abilities using proper ethics and applying the scientific method.

Appendix

APPENDIX A
Diet Coke can # 22 82 26 63 25 35 60 59 17 44 1 9 19 37 2 Diet Coke weight 370.82 371.86 375.35 375.38 364.85 372.98 370.8 373.22 369.95 373.73 370.86 373.25 371.84 373.54 374.28 Coke Zero can # 51 13 40 33 59 37 47 27 16 25 72 58 63 10 43 Coke Zero weight 371.58 372.06 370.92 373.57 371.06 372.19 372.79 372.28 371.85 371.76 372.71 371.98 373.45 369.97 373.64 Diet Pepsi can # 63 86 17 30 18 34 55 25 12 23 35 16 75 73 60 Diet Pepsi weight 370.39 369.29 370.12 368.27 371.94 371.09 367.69 368.4 369.36 369.64 375.22 368.9 366.54 370.19 371.08

APPENDIX B

Coke Zero Diet Coke

Diet Pepsi

Bibliography Pictures for cover page were taken from: Diet coke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diet-Coke-Can.jpg Diet Pepsi http://www.brooklyntobacco.com/pepsi-diet-12oz/ Coke Zero http://www.productreview.com.au/p/coca-cola-coke-zero.html