Data visualization project.

Took me awhile to get this to work, I had a problem with publishing the word cloud i made with many eyes so i took a screenshot instead.  I had a  lot of fun playing around with Many eyes, and I love the massive amount of customization available for every different type of visualization.  Just by playing around with the colour and orientation I think this wordle captures not just the make up of the poem, but also the feeling.  The white on black and the key words bring line and lines of this poem out of my memory, I've found this type of visualization to work wonderfully for studying, and more specifically reviewing.

HUMA 150 – Text Analysis and Digital Tools using “Voyeur”

(1) describe your tool or tool suite:
Voyeur:
* Online text analysis program web-based
* Allows you to analyze your texts
* Upload files –pdfs, word documents
* Copy and Paste
* Different ways of retrieving info from different sources
* Words used
* Gives you graphs, trend counts, words
* Summaries on one side, frequencies on another
* Highlights frequently used word
* Looks clean simple
* Has a stoplist  so you can exclude common words like (is/and/are)

(2) demonstrate your tool or tool suite and
Voyeur – Will be using the Course Blog. Demonstrate stoplist

(3) answer the following questions:

What kinds of data can you analyse using your suite of tools?
Anything digital text or written text converted to a digital format. Websites, PDFs, eBooks, News Articles – in different languages too - multilingual

What kind of information can you extract from the data?
Word frequency, count, phrases used, Summary of Statistics and List od Documents
Compare texts



What kinds of questions can you ask of your data using text analysis and data visualizations?

• Why is a certain word used more than others
• What context are main words used in (you can look up what sentences words are used)
• What words are commonly used in conjunctions with others (phrases)
• At what times in the book/text is a certain word used the most/more frequently

What hidden patterns are revealed using text analaysis and data visualization?

• Where certain words are used most frequently and in what part of the text
• What words are used less frequently
• Frequency of slang (abbreviations) vs Formal words
• Comparing texts

Who would be most likely to perform this kind of text analysis or data visualization?

• Scholars or Professors reviewing academic thesis/articles
• People reading large documents
• Students doing essays on language/linguisitics
• People studying works of literature
• Just for fun.
• Techers checking for plagiarization (compare)

Limitations/Difficulties

• Cannot remove words from list – stop list is predefined/ want to customize it – example (pg for page)
• Would be nice to have a dictionary option (convenience)

Praise:
* Very user friendly

Text used – From Project Gutenberg – How to Analyze People on Sight by Benedict and Benedict.

• Why did your group choose the (type of) data/texts that you did?
• It was popular and top read. It sounded intriguing
• What parts of the tool did you use?
• Stoplist, charts, and comparing texts

• What did you find out about these texts?
• Not a lot in common (Dracula and How to…)  
• The word man is used almost equally in both
• 6,958 unique words out of 64, 060
• The is used 4108 times

• Which elements of the tools produced the deepest kinds of analysis (i.e. which were the most useful)?
• Context tool as you can see what words were used the most where
• Stop list was somewhat helpful

I plan to create a word tree or a word cloud using many eyes for my text analysis and data visualization exercise.

Hello world.

So first off, its been one heck of a crazy month.  Moving in to my new apartment, almost a thousand dollars in ferry tickets from running back and forth to the mainland this month, getting sick, still being sick 2 weeks later.... and turning 19 right in the middle of all that, not to mention class.  Crazy month indeed.

Anyways my name is Jordon, but everyone, aside form my girlfriend, call me Harco (even my parents strangely enough).  I'm in school for a 2 reasons, first to get that magical ticket to grad school in Europe, and second to get caught up in the experience, tossed around a lot, and maybe learn something in the process.  I'm currently dabbling in the dark arts of fine arts, and balancing it out with healthy dose of humanities.  Im minoring in technology and society, and looking to major in visual arts (maybe).  Truthfully the only thing I have ever wanted to do, aside from being a super villain, is become an architect.  My left brain snickers and says good luck, but since when does my right brain ever listen to my left?  Anyways I am looking forward to a much more productive and enjoyable october, Can't wait :)

-Harco