I shall carry out the word count by taking a one hundred word sample from each article, noting down in tallies the number of each word length ranging from one – fourteen in a frequency table. I shall than work out the Mean, Median and mode for each article. I shall also graph the information in Histograms, Frequency Polygons, Box and Whisker plots and I may use Pie Charts. From these graphs, I shall draw my conclusions and prove my Hypothesis true or false.
I will also work out the standard deviation for each.
I will use the Fogg Readability test to work out the reading age of the two articles. The formula is:
- Take any sample of 100 words in complete sentences.
-
Count only whole sentences by counting full stops; if the last full sentence stops short of the 100th word count only the full sentences for this stage.
- Count the number of words with three or more syllables.
- Divide the number of sentences into 100; answer = x
- Add the number of words with more than three syllables to your number, i.e., x + y; y being the number of words with three or more syllables.
- Multiply X x Y by 0.3 to give an American grade equivalent.
- Add 5 to your answer to give the English Reading age.
From the results of this formula, I will be able to prove my hypothesis true or false.
I shall do the above to compare the two articles from the Telegraph and use the results to prove my hypothesis true or false.
Match magazine:
Telegraph Sport article:
Telegraph Politics article:
Match magazine:
Mean: 100 / 14 = 7.14,
Median: 3.2,
Mode: Three letters
Telegraph sports article:
Mean: 100 / 14 = 7.14,
Median: 4,
Mode: Three letters
Telegraph politics article:
Mean: 100 / 14 = 7.14
Median: 3.4
Mode: 3 / 4
Match magazine: Histogram 1
Telegraph sport article: Histogram 2
Telegraph politics article: Histogram 3
Reading age.
Match magazine:
Telegraph sports article:
Telegraph politics article:
Standard Deviation.
Match magazine:
Telegraph sports article:
Telegraph politics article:
Graphs 1, 2 and 3 show the cumulative frequency of each sample.
Graph 1 shows that most the words in the Match magazine fell close together and were small words.
Graph 2 shows the same about the sports article from the Telegraph.
However, graph 3 shows that the politics article from the Telegraph had a bigger spread. The box plots show the same things only clearer.
The histograms are there to show the frequency density. They also show were most the word are situated.
The pie charts show the data as a percentage of the whole.
The standard deviation is just another way of showing the spread of the data. All three articles have a standard deviation of around 2.7.
