Introduction
I am going to do my first piece of coursework in maths called ‘read all about it’. This coursework requires me to gather data from two printed sources. These two printed sources would be a tabloid newspaper and a broadsheet paper. I will compare the features of a broadsheet newspaper to the features of a tabloid newspaper. I am going to try and prove that one has a longer average word length than the other.
Hypothesis:
In the broadsheet the average word length will be longer than the tabloid newspaper. This is because the tabloid is aimed at people the reading age of 10-13 where as the broadsheet is aimed at more educated people at ages 17 and over.
Plan
I am going to buy a tabloid and a broadsheet newspaper from the same day. It is important to buy them from the same day so I can avoid bias. I am going to buy the times and the sun and compare the two, there is no specific reason why I chose these newspapers. I have chosen to select 4 articles, 2 from tabloid and 2 from broadsheet. I will be comparing 2 articles on the same topic and then compare all 4 articles together on line graph. For example I have chosen 2 articles talking about the elections in American. By reading both articles I have realised that they both have different views on who is going to win the election. My second 2 articles I will be talking about the similar topic on sports. In each article I will select randomly 100 words to avoid bias. So I will not use 1 word because it wouldn’t be accurate and would clearly be biased. I also will not use all the words in the article because it’s too long and is easier to make mistakes. Therefore I will be happy using about 100 words because it will reduce errors and is more accurate. I will then count the number of letters in each word in both article and then compare both similar articles to see which has the longer word length. After comparing similar topics I will then compare the word length with all 4 articles. The data would be presented in a table tally chart and then turned into a frequency table so then I work out the mean, median and mode for both newspapers. I will then compare all 4 articles together in a line graph. From these diagrams I will hopefully be able to see which newspaper has a longer average word length.
