Characters per poem
Median and quartiles of the main-text characters of poetry works, by century.
The median poem has 56 characters in every century but the 9th (40) — the length of one seven-syllable regulated verse. Quartiles lie at 28 or 40 (quatrains have 20 or 28 characters, a five-syllable regulated verse 40) and 56–109; the mean (49–93; 48.7 in the 9th century, 93.0 in the 12th) exceeds the median — the distribution has a long right tail.
- Formula
- median(chars_main) over poetry works
- Caveats
- Reference points: 20 characters for a five-syllable quatrain, 56 for a seven-syllable regulated verse. Cycles bundled as one work push the value up.
- Reliability card
- exactExact count — read straight from the source XML
Classification quality: a stratified sample of 300 own works (major class × century) was blind-coded from titles; 97.3% agree with the ITKC major class (Wilson 95% 94.8%–98.6%; 3 undecided counted as disagreement; a second coder re-coded 30 of them blind with 97% agreement). Known block error: 284 works of 湖陰雜稿 (ITKC_MO_0126A) filed as 冊文類 carry poem titles; they are left as classified and noted here.
| Century | Poems | Median | Mean |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9th century | 60 | 40 | 48.7 |
| 12th century | 1,531 | 56 | 93.0 |
| 13th century | 958 | 56 | 84.8 |
| 14th century | 11,230 | 56 | 63.6 |
| 15th century | 30,858 | 56 | 83.8 |
| 16th century | 104,394 | 56 | 73.3 |
| 17th century | 122,933 | 56 | 78.9 |
| 18th century | 76,094 | 56 | 89.6 |
| 19th century | 29,174 | 56 | 90.8 |
| birth year unknown | 626 | 28 | 64.5 |