I'd Like to Buy a Vowel

       Actually, I'd like to buy a whole bag of vowels.  I cooked up a craft project recently that required alphabet beads - those beads the hospital used for labeling newborns back in the 1950's. My plan was to buy a 97¢ wine glass from Walmart and add a wine charm that spelled out the name of each guest.  I studied up on wine charm construction  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKwxwZVFIM, made a run to Joann for wire and beads, and got down to business.  It was all good until I ran out of vowels.
     In first grade we learned that the English language has a 26 letter alphabet.  There are five vowels and 21 consonants.  The five vowels are used 37.7% of the time - 19% of the alphabet is used almost 40% of the time.  Here are a couple of resources that explain letter frequency:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency

http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/what-is-the-frequency-of-the-letters-of-the-alphabet-in-english

     I bought Darice Alpha Beads.  Each bag contained 104 beads.  I thought I was playing it safe by purchasing 3 bags of beads - a total of 312 assorted beads.

     Here's what I got:                                      Here's what statistics say I should have gotten:                                                
          A - 7                                                               A - 26
          E - 8                                                               E - 34
          I - 8                                                                 I - 23
          O - 8                                                               O - 22
          U - 7                                                               U - 11

I got 12% vowels instead of 37% vowels.  I was spelling out names, not writing prose, but let's assume that the percentages remain the same for spelling names.  I would have had to buy lot's of extra beads to get the necessary vowels, and I would have had a plentitude of unusable letters. One bead containing the letter Q (a letter that occurs .19% of the time in English) would have been more than enough in 312 beads, but I got eight of them.  I could read a novel and not encounter eight Q's.
     The bead packaging contained the Darice company web address, so  I sent them an email suggesting that they sell bags of just the vowels.  Four days later, I got a response from a Darice representative which thanked me for my suggestion and assured me that my comments would be passed along to a buyer.  On top of that, they are sending me a couple of bags of beads.  I can remake my wine charms with full names.  Thank you to the Darice company for being responsive, and thanks a bunch for the beads!

http://www.darice.com/ecom/default.aspx

Kathleen had to settle for "Kath" and Rose had to settle for "Rosi."  Some people got only their initials.