M&M's Jar

I just typed in Google the new title of my LiveJournal "M&M's jar" and I was quite amazed by one result I saw.

It is  "Unique Shape of M&M's Interests Scientists", a topic tackled in NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday hosted by Ira Flatow.
Flatow said that one could win the game "Guess how many M&M's in the jar" using a scientific approach. He said that via estimating
the jar's volume in cubic centimeters and multiplying it by .68 then dividing the product by .636 cubic centimeters (the volume of one M&M), the answer you'll be getting from the said equation would be the number of M&M's inside the jar. How true?

(I changed some of the articles terminologies because it said "Divide that sum by .636 cubic centimeters -- the volume of one M&M." the term sum is quite confusing because there is no Addition in the said formula.)

Summary Equation:
(estimated volume of jar in cubic cm x  .68) / .636 cubic cm of one M&M's = number of M&M's in the jar

(I also changed the formula form the article because it said "cubic cm's" instead of cubic cm and I added the word estimated for convinience.)

and I can't understand why is the title concerned about shape of M&M's it didn't talk about it's shape at all.

I'm not a perfectionist, I'm just intrusive.

Feb 2004. NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday,  retrieved at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1703595
Oct. 7, 2007