Handling Data Coursework : Read all about it

When I have collected my data I am going to find out the mean, mode, median and range. I will find the lower-quartile, upper-quartile and inter-quartile range and represent this data in box plots, and bar charts.

Hypotheses.

I predict that the mean number of letters for The Sunday Express will be longer than the mean number of letters for The Daily Mail because The Sunday Express is only published once a week and The Daily Mail is published every day.

Results.

The Daily Mail.

Words

Frequency

Mean

9

9

2

2

24

3

7

51

4

6

64

5

2

60

6

6

36

7

6

42

8

1

88

9

6

54

0

2

20

1

0

0

2

2

2

0

0

4

2

28

Total

00

488

Mean - 488/100 = 4.88

Mode - 3

Median - 4

Upper-quartile - 7

Lower-quartile - 3

Inter-quartile range - 4

The Sunday Express.

Word

Frequency

Mean

0

0

2

7

34

3

6

48

4

5

60

5

7

85

6

2

72

7

2

84

8

4

32

9

2

8

0

0

1

1

2

0

0

3

3

4

2

28

Total

00

495

Mean- 495/100 = 4.95

Mode- 2 and 5

Median - 5

Upper-quartile - 6

Lower-quartile - 3

Inter-quartile - 3

Analysis of results

From the results I have found that the median is larger for The Sunday Express (5) than the median of The Daily Mail (4). The mean number of letters is about the same for both the papers, The Sunday Express (4.95) and The Daily Mail (4.88).

I have proved my hypothesis right after investigating and have found that the mean number of letters is slightly bigger for The Sunday Express than The Daily Mail.

Extension

I am now going to investigate further and compare the number of words in 100 sentences for the same newspapers. I will randomly select the page and I will choose the sentences one after the other.

I will represent this data in cumulative frequency diagrams and then find out the median, the upper-quartile, and lower-quartile and the inter-quartile range.

Hypothesis

I predict that the mean number of words will be longer for The Sunday Express than The Daily Mail; this is also because The Sunday Express is published once a week and The Daily Mail is published every day.

Results

The Daily Mail

Number of words per sentence

Frequency

Mid-points

Mean

Cumulative frequency

to 3

6

2

2

6

4 to 6

28

5

40

34

7 to 9

45

8

270

79

0 to 12

2

1

32

91

3 to 15

9

4

26

00

Total

00

680

Mean - 680/100 = 6.80

Median lies in 7 to 9

Modal class = 7 to 9

The Sunday Express

Number of words per sentence

Frequency

Mid-points

Mean

Cumulative frequency

to 3

4

2

8

4

4 to 6

9

5

45

23

7 to 9

51

8

408

74

0 to 12

23

1

253

97

3 to 15

3

4

42

00

Total

00

806

Mean - 806/100 = 8.60

Median lies in 7 to 9

Modal class = 7 to 9

Analysis of Results

From the cumulative frequency diagrams I have found that the median lies between 7 to 9 for both The Daily Mail and The Sunday Express. The lower-quartile for both the papers lies between 4 to 6. However the upper-quartile for The Daily Mail lies between 7 to 9 and for The Sunday Express it lays In between 9 and 10. I have found that the mean for The Sunday Express is larger than the mean for The Daily Express and have proved my hypothesis right after investigating further.

Evaluation.

This investigation was very fair as I randomly selected my data. The data representation was clear but I could have represented my data using different charts, for example pie charts or frequency polygons.