broadsheets and tabloids

   To help me with my investigaton I am going to use the data handling cycle below.

Specify the problem and plan

Collect data from a

variety of sources

Interpret and discuss data

Process and represent data

After I have collected my data I will be analysing it using bar charts, mean, mode, median, range, circumulative frequency, interquartile range, box plots and pie charts.

Results

I have collected my results from an article in the Guardian and the Mirror.

The Gaurdian (broadsheet)

number of letters in words   Total

1                                       3

2                                       7

3                                      16

4                                      18

5                                      15

6                                       7

7                                      11

8                                      4

9                                    10

10                                    5

11                                     3

12                                     1

Total                                100

The Mirror (tobloid)

Number of letters in words   Total

1                                        4

2                                       7

3                                     34

4                                      21

5                                        6

6                                       12

7                                        5

8                                        1

9                                       7

10                                      3

Total                                 100

Averages

I am now going to do the mean, mode, median, and rangefor each set of results, I am going to do this to try and prove that my hypothesis is right.

The Gaurdian

Mean

(1x3)+(2x7)+(3x16)+(4x18)+(5x15)+(6x7)+(7x11)+(8x4)+(9x10)+(10x5)+(11x3)+(12x1)=548

548/100=5.48

mean=5.48

Mode

The mode is 4 this is because it's the most common number, as you can see from my table

mode=4

Median

100/2=50  I will count my the numbers in the total column, and when I reach 50 I will stop, because this is my middle number.

median=5

Range

The highest number of letters in a word is 12. The lowest number of letters in a word is 1

12-1=11

range=11

The Mirror

Mean

(1x4)+(2x7)+(3x34)+(4x21)+(5x6)+(6x12)+(7x5)+(8x1)+(9x7)+(10x3)=442

442/100=4.42

mean=4.42

Mode

The mode is 3 this is because it's the most common number, as you can see from the table above.

mode=3

Median

100/2=50  I will count the numbers in the total column, and when I reach 50 I will stop this is because this is the middle number.

median=4

Range

The highest number of letters in a word is 10. The lowest number of letters in a word is 1

10-1=9

range=9

I am going to put all the averages I have found in to a table

              Mirror (tabloid)    Gaurdian (broadsheet)

Mode              3                          4

Mean              4.42                     5.48

Median           4                          5

Range             9                          11

These averages show that there is a small difference between the average word length of a tabloid and a broadsheet. However this difference is too small to be conclusive.