PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS

Probability and Statistics



Probability and Statistics

Introduction

English is an international language and also official language of most of the countries of the world. Being the widely spoken language, English is frequently compared with other languages. There is difference in grammar, vocabulary and even sentence structure. The English phrase translated to English will not have same number of words that were in English. Similarly, the number of letters in the words is also different in different languages. This paper aims to find whether there is sufficient statistical evidence in the data to support the idea that the foreign language version differs significantly from the English versions in the distribution of the number of letters employed in word construction.

The sample of English and Latin is provided below, which is used to analyze the number of letters in English and Latin words.

English

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Latin

Tres anuli pro regibus Quendorum sub caelo,

Septem pro dominis Nanorum in regia lapidea eorum,

Novern pro Viris Mortalis mon condemnatis,

Unus pro domino nefario on solio obscuro eius

In terra Mordoris ubi umbrae iacent.

Unus Anulus ca omnia superare,

Unus Anulus ea invenire,

Unus Anulus ea omnia collocare

Et ea in tenebris nectere,

In terra Mordoris ubi umbrae iacent.

The number of letter in each word is extracted in numerical form to create the two variables as shown in below table.

Words

English

Latin

1

5

4

2

5

5

3

3

3

4

3

7

5

5

9

6

5

3

7

5

5

8

3

6

9

3

3

10

6

7

11

3

7

12

3

2

13

5

5

14

5

7

15

2

5

16

5

5

17

5

3

18

2

5

19

5

8

20

4

4

21

3

11

22

6

4

23

3

3

24

6

6

25

2

7

26

3

2

27

3

5

28

3

7

29

3

4

30

4

2

31

4

5

32

2

8

33

3

3

34

4

6

35

5

6

36

2

4

37

3

6

38

4

2

39

2

5

40

6

8

41

5

4

42

3

6

43

7

2

44

3

8

45

3

4

46

4

6

47

2

2

48

4

5

49

4

9

50

3

2

51

3

2

52

4

2

53

2

8

54

4

7

55

4

2

56

3

5

57

4

8

58

2

3

59

5

6

60

4

6

61

3

 

62

3

 

63

2

 

64

3

 

65

8

 

66

4

 

67

5

 

68

2

 

69

3

 

70

4

 

71

2

 

72

6

 

73

5

 

74

3

 

75

7

 

76

3

 

The above table clearly shows that in the English Text, there were 76 words, while in Latin text the word count was only 60. The difference in number of letters in the words of two different languages can also be observed, however, this significance will also be tested statistically.

Hypothesis

The hypothesis or the research question for this paper is that “Do foreign languages use words comprising of more or less letters than English in written text?”

Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive statistics plays a vital role in almost all facets of human progress. Descriptive statistics is the tabulation of data presentation in graphical or illustrative calculation. The statistical techniques are applied widely in marketing, accounting, consumer surveys, sports, education, politics and medicines due to the need of decision-making.

Measures of central tendency (mean, median and mode) serve as points of reference for interpreting Measures of Central Tendency and Dispersion provides a basis for conducting further tests on the data. In order to analyze the measure of central tendency and dispersion for this research paper, the same sample text has been taken of the two languages.

The purpose of a measure of central tendency is to summarize in one number the typical value or the most representative of a result set. There are different measures of central tendency. The best known methods to measure the central tendency of the data include arithmetic mean, ...