- I have taken articles from The Sun as my tabloid and The times as my Broadsheet as each are well known and popular examples of their respective newspaper styles. I have taken 3 articles on the same subject from each, one from the sports section, one on a fashion article and an article on politics from each paper, to give a good variation to my data and try to give a good overview of each paper.
% of Article Devoted to Pictures
Pie Chart
This pie Chart is a visual representation of the % of the page that is devoted to pictures in a broadsheet newspaper. It shows that pictures, photos and advertisements take up a total of 23% of the article. This is inline with my hypothesis that Broadsheets are more difficult to read as it suggests that words make up a very large amount majority of the article and less of the article is focused upon visual appeal. I have chosen to use pie charts to represent my data because they are simple and easy way of communicating data.
In Tabloids a total of 47 % of the article is devoted to pictures, photos and advertisement. This is over twice the % found in the Broadsheet newspaper, suggesting that, as more of the article is based on visual appeal therefore there is less room focused on writing, tabloids are easier to read, proving my hypothesis.
Sentence Length
To represent sentence length I used Box and whisker diagrams because I believe that they will provide a number of factors, such as mean sentence length, upper and lower quartile etc and are simple visuals which display my results well and make them easy to understand, will provide good evidence to prove my hypothesis.
Tabloid Sentence Length Statistics
Mean, x: 21.2439
Standard Deviation, x: 10.815
Range, x: 44
Lower Quartile: 11
Median: 22
Upper Quartile: 27
Semi I.Q. Range: 8
Broadsheet Sentence length Statistics
Mean, x: 29.5854
Standard Deviation, x: 12.6722
Range, x: 56
Lower Quartile: 20
Median: 29
Upper Quartile: 34
Semi I.Q. Range: 7
The Box and whisker Diagrams Prove again that tabloids are easier to read than Broadsheets. Not only is the average sentence length over 8 words longer in Broadsheets (29.60) than it is in Tabloids (21.24) but the lower and upper quartile ranges are both higher in the Broadsheet newspaper. An example of how much easier the tabloid newspaper is to read than the broadsheet is shown by the longest sentence length, in the broadsheet newspaper it is 72 words, but in the tabloid it is just 46.
Histograms
Broadsheet
Tabloid
These histograms show that Tabloids use shorter sentences more often than Broadsheets, but that Broadsheets uses longer sentences more often, therefore we can determine that Tabloids would be easier to read.
Word Length
In order to illustrate the differences in word length I have chosen to represent my data using Box and whisker Diagrams, dot plots and histograms from which I should be able to gain good evidence and a thorough insight in to word lengths to help prove my hypothesis that Tabloids are easier to read than Broadsheets.
Box and Whisker Diagrams
Broadsheet Word Length Statistics
Mean, x: 4.94792
Standard Deviation, x: 2.6629
Range, x: 11
Lower Quartile: 3
Median: 4.5
Upper Quartile: 7
Semi I.Q. Range: 2
Tabloid Word Length statistics
Mean, x: 4.54167
Standard Deviation, x: 2.66894
Range, x: 12
Lower Quartile: 2
Median: 4
Upper Quartile: 6
Semi I.Q. Range: 2
I found the Box and whisker plots and the word length statistics quite surprising because they appeared to prove my hypothesis, the results were not as clear as I would have liked them to be. It shows that mean word length to be higher in the Broadsheet rather than the tabloid. Although the longest word overall (13 letters) was used in the broadsheet, both papers use atleast one single letter word, this is due to the inclusion of words such as ‘I’ and ‘a’ in the English language, therefore this makes results seem less clear.
Dot Plots
Broadsheet Word Length
Tabloid Word Length
The dot plots show that there is a more complicated use of vocabulary in Broadsheets, as the negative skew of results is stronger in the tabloid, showing that shorter words are used
more often in this paper, proving my hypothesis.
Histogram
Tabloid
Broadsheet
The histograms re iterate the findings of the dot plots that, although both histograms are similar, the overall negative skew suggest that the broadsheet has an overall more complicated use of vocabulary.
Conclusion
I believe that the data I have collected proves my Hypothesis that Tabloids are easier to read because I have shown that they have more % of the page devoted to pictures, photos and advertisement, suggesting more of the article is focused on text, and also have longer sentence and word length, suggesting a more complicated use of vocabulary. The mathematical process that best shows the comparison was the Box and Whisker diagrams as they were a simple way of portraying a lot of mathematical data, the mathematical data which is of least significance are the dot plots because I believe I could have possibly represented the data in a better way eg bar charts are similar but are easier to read. To improve the project I would have liked to have had more time so I could, in turn, collect more data and my results would then be more reliable. Also I would have liked to have sampled a broader array of newspapers, i.e take results from more than one type of Tabloid/Broadsheet, this would also have made my results more reliable. Furthermore, taking a larger sample size than just 1000 words and 45 sentences may also have made my results more reliable.