Comparing Newspapers

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GCSE Maths Handling Data Coursework - Comparing Newspapers

Introduction

'The Times' newspaper is universally accepted as Britain's national newspaper. I have been asked to investigate the concerns of the editor that the sales are lower in comparison with the tabloids. I am going to investigate the lengths of the words, how many words there are in a sentence and the reading age if those who read the newspapers.

Hypothesis 1

I hypothesise that the world length for the broadsheet newspapers will be higher than that of the tabloid newspapers.

Broadsheet newspapers have longer words than the tabloid papers on average, because they are aimed at an older, more intelligent audience. In addition, broadsheets have longer articles and more statistics, graphs etc. This may attract the attention of a more intellectual audience.

Hypothesis 2

I hypothesise that the number of words in a sentence will be higher in the broadsheet newspapers than in the tabloid newspapers.

Broadsheet newspapers have a more complex sentence structure than the tabloid papers; this made me predict that words in a sentence would be higher in a broadsheet.

Hypothesis 3

I hypothesise that the reading age for readers of broadsheet newspapers will be higher than that of readers of tabloid newspapers.

Broadsheets are aimed at a higher reading age because of all the reasons above in the hypotheses.

Method

Firstly, I am going to collect four newspapers from the same day, two tabloids and two broadsheets. The tabloids I am going to use are 'The Sun' and 'The Daily Mirror'; the broadsheets I am going to use are 'The Times' and 'The Daily Telegraph'. By choosing two broadsheets and two tabloids, I have ensured that I have use d a fair amount, as this will help me get the most accurate results. Also, as I have bought the newspapers on the same day, the articles included in the newspapers will have the same headlines story - not word by word, but in general. This will also ensure that what I have done is fair and accurate.

After I have collected all the newspapers, the question is how many samples shall I take? How will I choose my articles? Obviously, I can't check every article in every newspaper, there isn't enough time so I have decided to take a sample of 100 words from each article to investigate the word length (see hypothesis 1). 100 words is a good amount to choose because it isn't too much and isn't too little - just right. Then the question is how am I going to choose this sample. Originally I was going to choose two articles from each newspaper, one sports article and one front page article, but I found out I didn't have enough time. If I had done this, it would have made my results even more accurate. I have now decided to choose one sample from each of the four newspapers randomly. I'm going to count the number of pages in each newspaper, then enter the number in a calculator and press the button then the hash button. The calculator will then choose the number for me and by using this process, I have eliminated bias (another way which I can eliminate bias is my buying all the newspapers on the same day, as I mentioned above).
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When I have chosen the page number and located the article, I will start form the beginning ignoring pictures. This is because pictures aren't really part of the article. An article consists of words only, pictures aren't words, and therefore they are not part of the article. Pictures aren't the only things I'm going to ignore, I'm also going to ignore quotes, people's names and numbers, which are written in digits. I am choosing not to include numbers because the editor of 'The Times' clearly states that I have been asked to investigate 'word length', not numbers. I ...

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