Stage Four

Problem No. 12 Popular Letters

 

If you were to read a page in a book what letters do you think would occur the most?

Discuss this with your buddy and work out 4 letters you think are the most frequently used?

Explain why you arrived at this decision.

Open a page of any magazine or book. Look at the letters in the first 10 lines.

Which letters occur the most?

Were your guesses as to the 4 most frequently used letters correct?

Is your investigation the same as your buddy's?

Would you expect to get the same result if you used a non-fiction book?

How could you make your investigation more accurate?

(Hint: Use a table)

If the letter "a" on you keyboard wasn't working, what percentage of words couldn't you type?

All Stage 4 Problems

In the days before computers, books and newspapers were printed using lead letters which were assembled on boards. Each letter included in a text needed its own lead block with the letter engraved on one side.

These letters were arranged on the boards by people called typesetters. Typesetters were very aware of how many of each letter would be needed for a publication.

In fact they had a code:

etaoin shldu

Based on their experience, these were the most commonly used letters, in the order of how frequently they occurred:

e is the letter that occurs most commonly in the English language, t the next, and so on.

The tests you make for this question should show a similar pattern.