Come Tuesday, hundreds of costumed tots and their parents or guardians will descend upon West Philly streets for trick-or-treating. Neighbors usually buy a lot of sweet treats to give away but do they always buy the “right” sweets?

As you may have noticed, many kids are very selective about what kind of candy they want. This Halloween, a group of University of Pennsylvania students will be conducting a Halloween Data Project, trying to identify the most popular candy for West Philly kids.

“The general plan is to walk around on Tuesday during trick or treat, get permission from parents/guardians first and then ask kids their favorite candy,” writes Ethan Markwalter, a senior at Penn studying statistics. “We were also thinking about noting their costume too. For example, that way we know Batman likes snickers.”

All answers will be collected anonymously. Then, the team involved in the project will create a model visualizing the results from this “candy contest,” which will be shared with the community.

“The model will rank the “level of love” (so to speak) each candy receives from children, so that neighbors will know for the future what kind of candy to buy and give out or which ones to avoid,” writes another team member, Melissa Nong, also a senior student at Penn.

“This is part of a larger project to help improve data literacy and data agency for individuals and communities as a whole… We want to show that data can be made accessible and fun for children and a powerful tool for communities to harness.”

“Looking towards the future, we want to drive home the idea that communities deserve the right and value to their own data, beginning with this fun little Halloween project.”

We’ll keep you posted about the project results. Happy trick-or-treating!

(Photo by West Philly Local)