Candy Store Simulation
In this signature classroom exercise, students manage three simulated grocery stores selling Hershey’s candy. Students take on roles as managers, employees, and customers, conducting transactions with Monopoly money while maintaining records of all activities.
How It Works
People get promoted, hired, fired, change jobs, and get married. They also buy and sell lots of candy with Monopoly money! Students must record data on inventory, sales transactions, customer information, and HR changes.
Through the hands-on simulation, students experience firsthand how tedious and error-prone it is to maintain data records by hand, especially when lots of people are involved in updating a common data table.
Learning Outcomes
Data Redundancy
Students discover the problems with storing duplicate data across flat-file spreadsheets.
Update Anomalies
Students experience how changes in one record must be propagated to many places, leading to inconsistencies.
Legal & Financial Implications
Class discussion covers the real-world consequences of bad records and bad processes for maintaining and tracking data.
Need for Databases
The exercise motivates the need for relational database design, normalization, and data integrity constraints.
Activity Resources
- Spreadsheet Template (Google Sheets) — Template for recording transaction and personnel data
- Instructor’s Manual (PowerPoint) — Step-by-step guide for running the exercise
- Excel Formula Assignment — Follow-up assignment template with formula exercises
Credits
Graphics design credit to Christina Solazzo.