Frequencies of Letters vs. First Letters

Show that in an English dictionary the most frequent characters at the beginning of words do not coincide with the most frequent characters globally.

Get a list of common English words from WordList.

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Length[words = WordList[]]

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Take the first letter of each word.

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firstchars = StringTake[words, 1];

Count the number of words starting with each of these letters.

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Counts[firstchars]

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Visualize their relative predominance by generating a WordCloud. The most frequent first letters are the consonants s, c, p, d.

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WordCloud[firstchars]

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Compute the relative predominance of all the letters in all words by using LetterCounts.

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allchars = LetterCounts[StringJoin[words], IgnoreCase -> True]

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Now the most frequent letters are the vowels e, i, a.

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WordCloud[allchars]

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