Maths

The aim of this project is to see whether the three hypotheses are correct or not.

Hypothesis 1: Broadsheets use longer words that tabloids.

Word length

Plan:

For this hypothesis I will be looking at 1 article from a broadsheet and a tabloid, which will have the same stories. I will cut out the articles from both of the papers and will highlight 100 words which is the word limit for this hypothesis. Once I have highlighted 100 words, I will create a tally chart recording all the values for the word length. Once all the values for the word length are recorded on the tally chart. Once all of the values for the word length are recorded on a tally chart, I will be creating a frequency table comparing the two sets of data. Once I have compared the two sets of data I am going to calculate the mean, median, range, mode, lower quartile (LQ), upper quartile (UQ) and the interquartile range (IQR) for the results that I have. As a result I will then finally compare the two articles with the aid of box plots.

An article from a tabloid newspaper An article from a broadsheet newspaper

Tally and a frequency table for a tabloid newspaper

Number of letters in a word Tally Frequency fx

1 2 2

2 17 34

3 19 57

4 15 60

5 13 65

6 11 66

7 12 84

8 4 36

9 2 18

10 4 40

11

12

13 1 13

Total = 100

Mean = mode = 3

Cumulative frequency table

Number of letters in a word 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

frequency 2 17 19 15 13 11 12 4 2 4 1

Cumulative frequency 0 17 36 51 64 75 87 91 93 97 100

Range= maximum Ð'- minimum

13 - 1 = 12

Calculating IQR (UQ- LQ) and median from frequency table

Median = 100/2 = 50th value median = 4

LQ = 100/4 = 25th value LQ = 3

UQ = 3 (100/4) = 75th value UQ = 6

Box plots

By looking at the above distributions of the box plots for both of the data that I collected for this hypothesis from the tabloid and broadsheet newspaper, I found out that they were the same. This was because by looking at the two box plots both papers had the same median, lower quartile and upper quartile range.

Bar chart

The bar chart shows the number of letters in a word in a tabloid newspaper. The bar chart shows that 3 was the most common number of letters found in a word. However the least common number of letters found in a word in the tabloid newspaper was 13.

Tally and a frequency table for a broadsheet newspaper

Number of letters in a word Tally Frequency fx

1 3 3

2 16 32

3 20 60

4 16 64

5 11 55

6 10 60

7 11 77

8 3 24

9 4 36

10 2 20

11 3 33

12

13 1 13

Total = 100

Mean = mode = 3

Cumulative frequency table

Number of letters in a word 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

frequency 3 16 20 16 11 10 11 3 4 2 3 1

Cumulative frequency 0 16 36 52 63 73 84 87 91 93 96 100

Range = maximum Ð'- minimum

13 - 1 = 12

Calculating IQR (UQ Ð'- LQ) and median from frequency table

Median = 100/2 = 50th value median = 4

LQ = 100/4 = 25th value LQ = 3

UQ = 3 (100/4) = 75th value UQ = 6

Bar chart

The bar chart shows the number of letters in a word in a broad sheet newspaper. The bar chart shows that 3 was the most common number of letters in a word. However, the least common number of letters found in a word in the broadsheet newspaper was 13.

Conclusion:

The data does not support my hypothesis. This is because the hypothesis was that broadsheets have longer words than tabloid. However by looking at my box plots and