Dan Albrecht.

I feel as though Mallet can be an extremely useful tool in modeling different topics within a  given amount of text.  When I ran the program with the setting for 30 topics, 1000 iterations, and 15 words, I got Death, Details, Victorian Women, Setting, and Deep Thought.  With 10,2000, 30, I got Morbid and Services Request. With 10, 500, and 20, I got Action, Physical Characteristics, and Terror.

The topics Services Request, Details, Setting, Physical Characteristics, and Deep Thought as part of Sherlock Holmes did not surprise me since this is a mystery genre, and one would expect to find them.  What surprised me a little was the presence of Death, Morbid, and Terror.  Since many of these stories deal with murder, than maybe they shouldn’t have, but I was impressed that the Holmes stories don’t just appeal to those who want logic and analytically detective work, but these stories can also appeal to the emotions of their readers to keep them gripped.

I also got Action and Victorian Women in this list of topics.  Action was another plot device that Conan Doyle was able to use to appeal to his readers.  Victorian Women was an indicator that much of these stories reflect general attitudes about Victorian culture, including gender attitudes.

These lists of topics really help to underscore some of the general themes and plot devices of the Holmes stories, but these topics might have been harder to understand if the user has never read the Holmes stories, but it can be useful nonetheless.