The aim of my statistics coursework it to find out a way of comparing Authors of two different audiences.

Clatyn Janes

Statistics Coursework – A Comparison of the Style of Authors

Introduction

The aim of my statistics coursework it to find out a way of comparing Authors of two different audiences. The first audience is going to be a book for children, the book that I have chosen to use is Noddy this is a classic childrens book, the second audience is going to be a book for adults, and the book I have chosen to use is going to be Stephen Kings ‘The Dark Half‘ I have not read this book which will make my hypothesis more from my general knowledge then having reading the book and having a basic idea of how long the sentences are. I am going to do the comparison by comparing the length of sentences from each book.

Hypothesis

I think that the adult book will have a higher amount of words per sentence as children’s books are usually have a small amount of pages and a small amount of sentences for a page, I would say that most children’s books have only one sentence per page which will only consist of a small amount of words. Overall this leads me to thinking that the children’s book Noddy will have a high amount of sentences with less then 10 words and a lower amount of sentences with over 21 words. I think that Stephen Kings ‘ The Dark Half ’ will have a larger amount of sentences with over 16 words, I also think that the largest sentence of this book will be far bigger then the largest sentence in Noddy. ‘The Dark Half’ will also have a higher average of words per sentence.

Method

The way in which I am going to be collecting my raw data for Stephen Kings

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Method

The way in which I am going to be collecting my raw data for Stephen Kings

‘The Dark Half‘, is by selecting 5 pages at random by using the calculator and from the top of each page count 20 sentences, I will count word for word so if there is a joined word I will count them as two separate words, and if they text as changed to italic I will still continue through this until the sentence has finished. This means at the end of collecting my raw data I will have 100 sentences to compare with the 60 sentences I have been given for the book Noddy. I may find problems when I am looking for the sentences in Stephen Kings ‘The Dark Half‘ because there may be chapters which means the page where the chapter starts may not have 20 sentences available for me to use and there also may be pages where chapters end this means this page will also not have enough sentences to collect my data from, if I come across this problem I will simply randomise another page on the calculator and collect my data from there, in my evaluations I will write up if I have come across this problem.

Evaluation

Comparing Mean

I have worked out the mean by using data x frequency and this will give me the average words per sentence for each book. For Noddy the mean is 10.25 words per sentence and for Stephen Kings ‘ The Dark Half ‘ there are 16.25 words per sentence. I am pleased with this answer, as it has proven my hypothesis correct when I mentioned the average words per sentence would be higher for ‘The Dark Half’.

Comparing Bar Charts

From looking at the bar charts you can see that ‘ The Dark Half ‘ has a higher amount of words per sentence from the X-axis, this has proven that my hypothesis is correct again as I stated that largest sentence of ‘The Dark Half‘ will be far bigger then the largest sentence in Noddy. From the Bar Chart you can also see that ‘The Dark Half has varied results as it starts to decline after 16 – 20 words per sentence but then rises for 26 – 30 words per sentence but for Noddy’s Bar Chart once it begins to decline after 6 – 10 words per sentence it carries on declining.

Comparing Pie Charts

One of the main differences that you noticed about the pie charts is that there is far more segments for ‘The Dark Half’, this is because the was a far higher amount of word per sentences, Noddy’s Pie Chart Finishes at 21 – 25 words per sentences where Stephen Kings ‘The Dark Half’ continues too 41 – 45 words per sentence and makes the Pie Chart have 4 more segments then Noddys. The helps me to prove my hypothesis as I mentioned that Noddy will have a high amount of sentences with less then 10 words which is 58 % of the pie chart compared to 31% in ‘The Dark Half’ and all also stated that Noddy will have a lower amount of words per sentences over 21 words which is 5% of the Pie Charts compared to 32% in ‘The Dark Half’ Pie Chart. And for ‘The Dark Half’ I stated there would be a higher amount of sentences with over 16 words and the pie charts proves this, it has over 52% compared to Noddy’s 22% of the pie chart.

Comparing Box Plot Diagrams

From Noddys Box Plot Diagram you can see that its lower quartile is 9 words per sentence, which is not that different compared to ‘The Dark Half’ that has 10 words for the lower quartile. But the main difference is that Noddy’s upper quartile finishes 1 word below ‘The Dark Half’ Median that is 15, this means that ‘The Dark Half’ has a very large amount of words per sentence compared to Noddy. And what helps proves this even more is the Inter quartile Range because ‘The Dark Half’ has 16 words per sentence, which is double the inter quartile range of Noddy, which is 7, that makes a difference of 9 words per sentence.

Conclusion

You can see from my evaluation that my hypothesis is correct, this will lead you to think that adults books are harder to read then children’s but this is kind of insufficient as the words in ‘The Dark Half’ may have been short words, so to improve my theory I could do amount of letters in a word and compare. The only problem I came across was that some pages did not have enough sentences to collect my raw data from.