Compare two different articles, between their word length and their sentence length, one being a Tabloid Newspaper, and the other being a Broadsheet.

Data Presentation: -

I will present my results, by drawing a cumulative frequency diagram for Sentence Length, and also a box and whisker diagram. For word length, I will draw a bar chart, to show these results and also a stem and leaf diagram.

This will be my basic plan, this what I will be doing.

Articles: -

• The Sun
• The Diary Express

Introduction: -

• Aim

• Hypothesis
• Which problems might occur in the investigation
• Which words/sentences are I am going to look at?

Data Collection: -

• Table of results, stem and leaf for sentence length
• Tally charts of Word Length

Diagrams: -

• Cumulative Frequency/Box and Whisker
• Bar Chart/Stem and Leaf

Calculations: -

• Mean/Mode
• Standard Deviation/Spread

Analysis: -

• Comment on the diagrams and show my conclusion
• What do they tell us about the publication

Overall Plan: -

I will take two newspapers, The Sun and The Diary Express. From each of these newspapers, I will find an article, which is talking about the same subject. After this, I will take one hundred or more words in length. I will then produce a tally table and a stem and leaf diagram and count the number of words of each length from the passages and also, I will count the sentence length as well. From these tables I will produce a table showing my calculations showing the mean and standard deviation. After this, I will produce both of my diagrams for both sentence length and word length. I will both analyse both diagrams and see any comparisons between them, and show what similarities and differences they have.

        At the end, I will write my conclusion showing, if my hypothesis was right or wrong.

Now I am starting, with word length. As you can see the table below shows a tally chart showing how many letters in each word for each article.

I have collected this data by counting up each letter in each word. I have chosen to do 160 words for each article. I chose this number is because it is reliable and that at the end, I will get good results, which will prove my hypothesis

My hypothesis is again for word length:

• I believe also, that The Diary Express will have longer words than the Tabloid; this is because I believe that Broadsheets have a wider vocabulary, than tabloids, which will have shorter words, for younger people.

As you can I am trying to prove my hypothesis, I will try to make this investigations fair as possible. That’s why I won’t count any abbreviations.

I have now collected my data; this my tally chart for each newspaper.

As you can see, there are some significant things about this tally chart. I will analyse the tally chart for word length later on, but now you can tell straight away that the “The Sun” had shorter words than the Daily Express.

Now I am going to produce a bar chart, to make these results clearer.

Now I have collected my results, I am now going to do some calculations with my results. Standard deviation is a calculation, which tells us, how much spread are the results. I have calculation the standard deviation for both articles.

I have now finished the investigation for word length.

        Now I am starting sentence length. As you can see below, the stem and leaf diagram showing my data collection. I did this by choosing sentences throughout the article, and counting how many words in a sentence.

My hypothesis for sentence length:

• I believe that The Diary Express will have longer sentences than The Sun.

I have now collected my data, this is my stem and leaf diagram for each article.

You can tell straight away, that the daily express has more words in the sentence than the sun and the you can see that the sun has less words in a sentence.

Now I have finished my collection of data, and presenting them on diagrams I have already done standard deviation for both articles. I am now going to show a brief summary of all the numbers, which I have collected.

You can compare these results now, easier. From the word length, the numbers I got were very close but overall the daily express had a longer word length than the sun.

As well as the mean, the standard deviation shows a lot of significance. The standard deviation for the daily express was just higher than the sun.

For sentence length, there was a big difference between the numbers, which I had got. It is clear from the table and the graph that the daily express had a high median than the tabloids. The daily express also, have a bigger Interquartile range, showing a wider variation in word lengths. The curves for both articles show as well that the sun had shorter words, because of the steepness of the line and less long words because of the flattening line at the top. The box and whisker plot, shows that the daily express has a bigger Interquartile range, showing a wider variation in word lengths.

Now I have finished both investigations, I will write a conclusion and I will tell you what I have found throughout the investigation for word length and sentence length.

Word Length:

From both of the articles and referring to the bar chart, it is clear that The Sun uses shorter words than the daily express. Their isn’t many differences between the articles but it is significant that my hypothesis was right at the end.

        The Sun uses words with only one, two or three letters more than the daily express. Also, another difference is that The Daily Express uses more letters in a word than the sun. The daily express uses words with ten or eleven letters, which you would expect from a broadsheet. Broadsheets are aimed at people, who have high standard of education and language. I did some standard deviation as well with articles. I found that there wasn’t much difference. Overall the daily express had a bigger mean just by a margin. Both medians were close as well, but again the daily express just had a bigger median.

Sentence Length:

Again from my cumulative frequency diagram, there are a lot of differences between the diagrams and the box and whisker plots. The sun has got a smaller upper, lower and interquartile. The cumulative frequency curve for the tabloids is steeper than the broadsheets, showing that the broadsheets have longer words.

Overall Conclusion:

I have found out that my hypothesis was right saying:  

• I believe that The Diary Express will have longer sentences than The Sun.
• I believe also, that The Diary Express will have longer words than the Tabloid; this is because I believe that Broadsheets have a wider vocabulary, than tabloids, which will have shorter words, for younger people.

All my collection data, and graphs have proved my prediction. All of my evidence supports my prediction that the broadsheets would have longer word lengths than the tabloids.

Key Facts:

• The Daily express had the highest mean word length with 4.98
• The Sun had the lowest mean with 4.48
• The Daily express have a higher median, upper and interquartile range for sentence length
• The Daily express has a longer word length than the sun
• The Daily express has a longer sentence length than the sun