My second hypothesis is that the average sentence length in a broadsheet will be longer than in a tabloid, I believe this because the most complicated information would be found in the broadsheet and therefore the use connectives

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For my maths coursework I have chosen to compare a tabloid, which is a light-hearted gossip newspaper with more celebrity banter than factual information, with a broadsheet, which contains lots of information that concerns our every day lives and less gossip, it can be described as a more 'mature' newspaper. Broadsheets are normally printed in black and white whereas tabloids are printed in colour. The two newspapers are very different and there is a big boundary between fact and fiction, which separates the two. For my coursework I have decided to use the 'mirror; as my tabloid and the 'times' as my broadsheet. I have chosen these because in themselves they are very different and it will be very interesting to see how they both compare mathematically. From my tests I hope to find out how the lengths of words and sentences both compare and also how different the language is that they both use. I predict the language each paper uses will be very different as each paper has a different purpose, for example, a broadsheet is designed to inform whereas a tabloid is designed to entertain. I also believe that there will be longer words in a broadsheet when compared to a tabloid because of this, which brings me onto my hypotheses.

Hypothesis 1.

My first hypothesis is that the average word length in a broadsheet will be longer than in a tabloid, this is because a broadsheet is intended for a more educated audience who want to be informed about the daily issues therefore they would be more impressed with the use of long, complex words, whereas the audience a Tabloid is designed for would be more impressed with the quality of the information rather than the way in which it is presented.

Hypothesis 2

My second hypothesis is that the average sentence length in a broadsheet will be longer than in a tabloid, I believe this because the most complicated information would be found in the broadsheet and therefore the use connectives and punctuation will be more frequent in a broadsheet, whereas in a tabloid the editors rely on short, snappy sentences to grab the audiences attention.
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In hypothesis one the range and mean word length will be smaller in a tabloid.

In hypothesis two the range and mean sentence length will be bigger in a broadsheet.

To test my hypotheses I will use a sample of 100 words. I will collect this sample using 'systematic sampling', this means I will count the amount of words in an article and divide it by 100, this will tell me the nth term, which I can use to collect my sample. I have chosen not to use 'random sampling' and 'stratified sampling' as they would ...

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