Word Length
You will need passage A on page R1.

The line / marks off the first 100 words. Each of these 100 words is marked with the number of letters it contains.

Table 1 shows the result of this investigation.

Word Length	Tally marks	Number of words
1		4
2		12
3		27
4		22
5		13
6		9
7		5
8		6
9		1
10		0
11		1
12		0
	Total	100

Table 1 - Word lengths of 100 words in passage A

Try it Yourself with Numbers
You will need a passage 30 sentences long. Your teacher will tell you which one to use.

You will now need page R2.

c	Fill in the space at the top of the page with details of the passage you are using.
d	Look at Table 5 on page R2. Have you any words with more than 12 letters in your passage? If so, use the blank rows for these, by writing in the number of letters in the first column.
e	Now read each number in turn from your passage and insert a tally mark for each word, against the appropriate number in column 2. Remember that every fifth tally mark is drawn across the previous four to make a gate ().
f	Count up the tally marks and complete the third column of Table 5. Check that the numbers in this column add up to 100.
g	Compare the word lengths in your passage with those in passage A. Write two sentences to describe what you notice.

Using Bar Charts
Sometimes it is not easy to compare numbers in tables. It is sometimes better to draw a diagram. Here is a bar chart of the results obtained in Table 1.

Figure 1 - Bar chart of word lengths, passage A

You will need Figure 3 on page R2.

You need to make the horizontal line longer if any of your words contain more than 12 letters.

Compare your Figure 3 with Figure 1.

Write down what you notice.

Compare your Figure 3 with that of someone who has analysed a different passage.

The Mode and the Range
Look again at Figure 1. You will notice that the highest column is for words of 3 letters.

We say the MODE is 3 letters.

Another useful clue can be the RANGE. This is the difference between the highest and lowest values.

In Table 1 the shortest word had 1 letter, and the longest word had 11 letters.

The range is 11 - 1 letters = 10 letters.

Compare your mode and range with those of passage A.

*Mean Word Length
Table 2 shows the information contained in Table 1, but with an extra column added.

This column is headed 'Number of Letters'.

Word length	Tally marks	Number of words	Number of letters
1		4	1 x 4 = 4
2		12	2 x 12 = 24
3		27	3 x 27 = 81
4		22	4 x 22 = 88
5		13	5 x 13 = 65
6		9	6 x 9 = 54
7		5	7 x 5 = 35
8		6	8 x 6 = 48
9		1	9 x 1 = 9
10		0	10 x 0 = 0
11		1	11 x 1 = 11
12		0	12 x 0 = 0
Total		100	419

Table 2 - Calculating the mean word length

Look carefully and see if vou can discover how we get the numbers in the last column.

The 4 one-letter words had 4 letters altogether.
The 12 two-letter words had 12 x 2 letters = 24 letters altogether.
When the numbers are added together we get:

Total number of letters = 419
Total number of words = 100

Proportions
Look again at Table 1.

There were 8 words which had eight or more letters in them. We say the proportion of words with eight or more letters is ¹/₁₀₀

There was 1 word with 11 letters, and none with 10. We say the proportion of words with 10 or more letters is ¹/₁₀₀

Copy and complete the following for your results.

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