Investigate text (letters, words, sentences) in English or Welsh newspapers, comparing articles from both a Tabloid and Broadsheet newspaper.

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Mathematics Coursework 2005

Data Handling

This coursework task is to so with handling data. I am going to investigate text (letters, words, sentences) in English or Welsh newspapers, comparing articles from both a Tabloid and Broadsheet newspaper. For my Broadsheet newspaper, I will use an article from The Daily Telegraph. My chosen Tabloid is The Daily Express. Both articles are based on the same topic.

Hypothesis

I think that:

* The Broadsheet will have a larger amount of letters in the words. (a longer word length)

* The Broadsheet will have a larger amount of words in the sentences (a longer sentence length)

* The Broadsheet will take longer to read

I aim to prove these points through collecting and analysing data.

I am going to collect 2 types of quantitative data. By counting the amount of letters in words I will gain discrete data. I will also gain discrete data by counting the amount of words in sentences. When I time the time taken to read 400 words from both of the newspapers I will gain continuous data. For all of the data I will use a sample of 40. Both of the articles from the paper will be on the same topic to prevent my data from being bias or unreliable. Once all of the data has been collected, I will calculate the averages. For letters in words I will use the mode. For words in sentences, I will find the median, my cumulative frequency polygon will help me with this. I will use the mean average for the continuous data (time taken to read 400 words). To find out how consistent the results are for words in sentences I will use the inter-quartile range. For the spread of the continuous data, I will use standard deviation. This will tell me how consistent the results are. When it comes to presenting my data, I will use three different types of graph. For the continuous data, I will use a Histogram. For letters in words I will use a bar chart and for words in letters, I will use a cumulative frequency polygon. This will allow me to find the inter-quartile range.
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Results

Amount of letters in words

Broadsheet

No. of letters in words

Frequency

2

2

4

3

0

4

6

5

5

6

4

7

8

3

9

3

0

2

1

0

Tabloid

No. of letters

Frequency

0

2

6

3

7

4

7

5

6

6

6

7

2

8

3

...

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