Class Blog 1

Creeping man

~ Annie Swafford

word cloud sehrlock

 

sherlock wordle

 

I wanted to experiment with both tools, so above you can see the Voyant and Wordle visuals for the Sherlock Holmes story “The Case of the Creeping Man”. Each tool has its pros and cons. I like how with voyant you can see all the statistics and data behind eat word on the actual webpage and the fact you can add more stop words to customize what words appear. I wish it gave you the option to change the color and font. With wordle it’s just about the opposite. You have the option to change colors and font (though it’s very limited)  but it doesn’t show much data behind the words. I did figure out that if you right click on a word, for example I right clicked on ‘Sherlock’ and it gives you the option to delete the word. So for my visualization I removed Sherlock and Watson so it wouldn’t take away from other key words in the story.

The visualization aspect is helpful about each tool, but I find it really doesn’t offer much information about the plot of the story. If someone were to look at these word clouds without having read the story before hand they would only understand that the larger words are the ones that come up most often and maybe gather some information about who the characters are in the story and the areas the story is taking place.   I think Voyant is definitely more helpful and pays more attention to detail and statistics of the words. It is also helpful that you can edit the stop words and create your own stop word list. There is a lot to take in with Voyant but it’s nice that everything is all in one place: the word cloud, the actual text of the story, and the graphs for each word. The fact that it shows the words in context with the text is also very helpful.

 

http://sherlockholmes_cases.tripod.com/creeping.htm

Voyant Tools Word Cloud

~ Annie Swafford

 “A Case of Identity”

I made this word cloud of “A Case of Identity” using the website http://voyant-tools.org. I edited the stop words and added “Holmes” to the list because Holmes’ name is always the largest word on any Sherlock Holmes word cloud we have done in class. I figured it is obvious enough that Sherlock Holmes is important to the story, and does not need visual representation in this case.  I found it very interesting that the next most used word after “holmes” was “little”.  It was used 28 times in the story.  I used the Word Trends tab to track the use and context of the word “little”.  When the word was being used by Holmes it was most often used in a demeaning or sarcastic way.  When he is talking to Miss Mary Sutherland, who is worried about how she will pay Holmes, he says: “your own little income, does it come out of the business?” This reinforces the idea that Sherlock Holmes is somewhat sexist.  We originally saw this in “The Scandal in Bohemia” when he underestimates the woman.  Here, he is implying that this woman can’t possibly make much due to the fact that she is a woman.  It comes across in a very mocking tone, “your own little income”; not taking Miss Sutherland very seriously at all, as if her job was a joke.  Holmes also refers to the case as “her little problem”.  “Little” is also commonly used to describe things about Miss Sutherland.  She takes out a little handkerchief and places her little stack of papers on the table.

“Little” is also used when Sherlock is speaking of how to solve the case.  He tells Miss Sutherland to recall the little details about the man she was looking for.  He tells her that the little details are always the most important.

I did not find it surprising that Hosmer and Windibank were the next largest words on the word cloud because they are the two most important characters in this story (spoiler alert: they’re the same person).  The entire mystery revolved around finding out where Mr. Hosmer Angel was and we eventually find out that he was Mr. Windibank in disguise.

The fact that “man” appears more times than “woman” can also reflect the fact that Sherlock Holmes stories tend to be sexist.  Most of the characters are men, with the exception of the damsel in distress, Miss Sutherland, who needs to the help of big strong Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened to the man she couldn’t live without.

This word cloud does not tell much about the plot of the story, but it definitely gives a lot of information about the content of the story.  It displays the underlying themes that appear throughout the story in a visually appealing way.  Voyant does not give the creator much freedom to change the colors or shape of the word cloud which is disappointing, but I think the website does a good job of displaying the words in an appealing way.

“The Mystery of the Speckled Band”, reduced to its bare bones

~ Annie Swafford

class

Generated by Wordle, here’s a word cloud of The Mystery of the Speckled Band.

Perhaps most interesting is the prominence of Holmes and similar nouns- though I do believe there’s more to be said for Sir Doyle’s writing than there is for character in that regard. Particularly in the sense that “Holmes” occurs much more than “Watson”.  Incidentally, the titular speckled band has one of the fewest mentions in the story itself. Again, perhaps there’s more about Doyle’s writing style, but I find the fact that the cloud is more centered around characters than the actual plot elements and mystery to be fairly intriguing.

Word Cloud – The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

~ Annie Swafford

I used the tool Voyant (http://voyant-tools.org) to generate a word cloud for the Sherlock Holmes short story “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.”

I used stop words to get rid of unnecessary words within the cloud, and added “said” to the list, as it came up more than any other word prior to my editing. Since this story surrounds the mystery of a goose with a stone stuck in its throat, it is no surprise that “geese,” “goose,” “bird,” and “stone” are among the most commonly used words. Also among the most commonly used words are the last names of people in the story, like “Baker” and “Horner.” “Christmas” is a significant word because it not only describes the time of year, but is a key factor in Holmes’ decision to not take action against the man because of the good-hearted nature of that time of year. In my opinion, it is significant that “man” is so commonly used because it instills a sense of mystery, since the story surrounds the search for an unnamed mystery man who is responsible for committing the crime.

The word cloud generated by Voyant is helpful and insightful in regards to the story not only due to the words featured, but the easy-to-read visualization characteristics. The font is simplistic and easy to read, and various eye-catching, bold colors are used to highlight the different words.

While I believe that word clouds are useful visualizations of texts and can greatly benefit visual learners, I do not feel as if they provide an adequate representation of the text to audiences who have not done the reading. In my opinion, word clouds are best when used as tools for reinforcement and discussion after reading a text.

Screen shot 2014-09-21 at 5.21.39 PM

 

Scandal in Bohemia Word Cloud – Where’s Watson?

Image ~ ~ Annie Swafford

Using the Voyant tool, I made a word cloud of Sherlock Holmes’s adventure, “Scandal in Bohemia.” It is unfortunate that the tool does not utilize color to distinguish word frequency or other significant word trends because that would have allowed for some interesting insights. In any case, the word size was telling enough to extract some Sherlockian observations about the context of the story. In my generated word cloud ( http://voyant-tools.org/tool/Cirrus/?corpus=1411164560979.4726&query=&stopList=1411165833459tu&docIndex=0&docId=d1411099477875.99b8b096-b231-7094-d527-8b986fefb364), the most to least significant elements of the story are apparent from larger to smaller size. ‘Holmes’ appears 47 times, ‘photograph’ appears 21 times, ‘king’ (17), ‘majesty’ (16), ‘irene’ and ‘adler’ (13), and ‘woman’ (12). It’s no surprise that these four aspects of the story surface most frequently and the the photograph can be considered a tertiary character of the story because it is crucial to the reveal and the idea of ‘the woman.’

What I took most note of, however, was the lack of Watson’s name. Holmes is obviously the largest word, front and center, but Watson is notably smaller and on the outskirts of the cloud. His name appears 6 times, half as many times as the mention of Irene Adler’s name. Though this does make sense because he is the narrator and therefore is primarily mentioned in the first person in the text, I expected to see more of his name when Sherlock addresses him in conversation. A conclusion from this ‘where’s Watson’ is that this is a subtle show of Sherlock’s narcissism. Holmes’s heightened perception and memory are arguably the biggest parts of the story, but his lack of addressing Watson – our narrator and the right hand man – by name is a way of noticing Sherlock’s ego from a quantitative perspective.

TheWoman_WordFrequency ScandalBohemia_WordCloud2

Word Clouds and Sherlock: Both Masters of Decoding

~ Annie Swafford

Word Cloud

A picture is worth a thousand words, so just imagine how much can be said from a word cloud. After analyzing this word cloud of the Sherlock Holmes’s story, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, produced by voyant-tools.org, it is clear that a whole story can be told from just a few aesthetically placed words.

With word clouds the bigger the word, the more times the particular word appeared in the context. Since some of the larger words in this word cloud are “goose” (used 28 times) “geese” (used 17 times) and “bird” (used 18 times) it is safe to assume that this story has much to do with a fowl. “Stone” (used 21 times)  and “little” (used 24 times) to imply a precious tiny gem of some sort most likely plays a major role in this story. Other words that stand out are “Christmas” (used 9 times) and “good” (used 11 times) to  suggest this is a heart-warming time of year.

And as a person who has actually read this story, I can state that this is exact plot of the short story: it is around Christmas time and a man is trying to track down a bird that has a unique stone in it. This word cloud is awesome because it implies the main points and actual content of the story; thus readers can understand the main idea of the story before reading it. And who knows? Maybe the word cloud will entice a person to read the story when they may not have otherwise.

What makes this word cloud so successful is the placement of the words. The font is easy to read, and the different colors make it easy to differentiate the different words. Since the background color is white readers are drawn to look at the bold and colored words. Also, most of the words in this word cloud are unique to the story (No pronouns, conjunctions, etc.), so relevant information about The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle is easily conveyed in just a few key words.

This modern use of digital humanities may just put spark notes out of business. If this much can be told from a simple online engine that picks out the most commonly used words, what else can digital humanities teach us?

Blog 1: Word Cloud

~ Annie Swafford

Word Clouds are graphic visualizations of the most frequent words used in a text.  This tool allows fresh interpretations to be made about any texts.  It provides a unique way of looking at a cluster of frequently used words that may elicit  a different understanding of what is being presented.

I chose to closely read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Blue Carbuncle and create a Word Cloud to develop a new understanding and a fresh perspective on the story.  I used Voyant as a tool to generate a Word Cloud for the text.

Below is a Word Cloud for the entire story:
The Blue Carbuncle

After editing the stop words and removing irrelevant words, the most common words to appear in the text are: man, holmes, hat, goose, little, know, stone, bird, and geese (beginning with most frequent word).  These words make sense considering the premise of the story involves an investigation of the missing blue carbuncle in the neck of a goose.  However I feel that this visualization and understanding of what is most important and valuable in the text would benefit from excluding similar words such as “goose” and “geese” and “bird”.  I will edit the stop words to take away “geese” and “bird” and a few other less frequently occurring words that seem to be duplicates in one way or another to see how it strengthens my observation.  In the new Word Cloud, there is a stronger sampling of frequent and presumably important words.  The most frequent words are: man, holmes, hat, goose, little, know, stone, just, sir, baker, and tell.  These words are a little more precise and reveal a lot about the plot of the story.

wordcloud

A quick browse through the word trends shows some information about where words more frequently appear in the text.  The most frequently occurring word “man” appears scattered throughout the text in an even fashion.  This makes sense since it is such a generic word.  The top three words used commonly at the beginning of the text are: hat, goose, and stone.  The top three words used more towards the end of the text are: holmes, little, and know.  If I had no prior knowledge of the story I would analyze this information as a story starting out confidently and ending up a mystery.  There seems to be a clear understanding with these frequent words that the beginning of the story is set up in such a way that is confident and outlining the premise.  There are strong nouns that identify the main points and symbols of the story.  It highlights what is most important.  As the story progresses there are mysterious things happening.  A case is being investigated by Holmes.  The frequently used words that appear more often towards the end of the story are Holmes (noun), little (adjective), and know (verb).  Holmes is solving the mystery of the Blue Carbuncle so naturally one would expect his name to appear at the end or resolution of the story.  Interpreting the words as “Holmes knowing little” is another angle that could be looked at.  Even though he does solve the case, the majority of the story is all about clues and small bits of information that are used as a collective whole to solve a mystery.  These words and their placement in the text may be valuable in understanding the key points and themes of the story.

Using the Word Cloud platform and Voyant tool to analyze a Sherlock Holmes story is a fun and interactive way to read and understand the text.  Being able to control what words should or should not appear in the Word Cloud, viewing the word trends, and seeing the frequencies are all helpful and can be used to extract important symbols or themes in the text that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.

 

Erica Gedney

Observations on observation

~ Annie Swafford

Observation. It is the fundamental staple in our society upon which all human interaction is built. Observation is the ability to look at someone and make a judgement on a persons character just upon sight alone. Yet when we find ourselves in a would where judgement is a taboo term, one that draws up images of racism, sexists and two faced politicians. But if we all see judgement as so taboo, wouldn’t by definition itself observation be taboo as well? And is that also becomes taboo and our society is based around observation to stabilize and structure it then what does it become? We are told as kids that the ugly duckling can become a beautiful swan, that the monster can be nice, and that the beautiful people are sometimes truly the monsters, and this is not wrong; but why are we all shunned for our observations. In our hypersensitive, white washed, cookie cutter society we stride to all be different in the same way. I’m not saying that racism is right or that when Sherlock Holmes says something about wrong about foreigners that he is right, but i am saying that maybe we could all make our judgments and observations, as we all will regardless of what society says, and instead of using that as our only point of reference take the time to get to know someone. because no matter what anyone says image matters, but its not the only thing that matters. Love who you are, and don’t be ignorant about your observations, use them to better understand the society in which you live. Be thoughtful. Be observant. Be awake.

Digital Humanities is Huge at UCLA!

~ Annie Swafford

Digital Humanities at the undergraduate level is huge at other universities. Check out UCLA’s description about DH:

“Digital Humanities interprets the cultural and social impact of new media and information technologies—the fundamental components of the new information age—as well as creates and applies these technologies to answer cultural, social, historical, and philological questions, both those traditionally conceived and those only enabled by new technologies.”

There are lots of cool courses that show how DH is growing at colleges: http://www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu/