Simple Frequency Generator

Instructions

Welcome, Infinity Club! This webpage features a simple tool for calculating the frequencies of letters occurring in a block of English language text. Here, "frequency" means the number of times a letter occurs divided by the total number of letters; this number is often represented as a percentage. The bar graph to the right of the text box shows averages for the frequencies of letters in the English language. If you took your favorite novel and calculated its letter frequencies, the result would be very close to what you see in this graph.

You can try it out yourself as follows:

  1. Type (or paste) some text into the text box below.
  2. It's OK if the text contains punctuation and spaces - the tool ignores anything that's not a letter.
  3. Click the "Generate Frequencies" button. A new graph will appear showing the frequencies of the letters in the text you entered.
  4. You can see how your sample frequencies compare to English language averages by comparing the two bar graphs. Try moving the pointer over the graphs to get additional information.
  5. Once you've played around for a little bit, see if you can answer the questions listed below.

Sample Text

Letter Frequencies

Questions to Explore

  1. What's the most commonly occurring letter in English? Write down all 26 letters in order from most common to least common (Wordle fans, take note!)
  2. Following the usual rules of English grammar, can you write a paragraph whose frequencies are an exact (or almost exact) match of the actual English language frequencies? How close can you get? How can we measure "closeness" in this context?
  3. Suppose you were allowed to type anything you wanted, without worrying about grammar or spelling. Now can you get an exact match?
  4. Can you write a paragraph (made up of at least 3 sentences) whose frequencies look nothing like the expected English language frequencies?
  5. Which letter do you think occurs most frequently after the letter 'T'? What other kinds of frequencies do you think might be interesting or important to study?

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