jjs8, Jessica Jean Scott
Part 1
Address
This graph is comparing the use of the word "address" as different parts-of-speech between 1800 and today. The part-of-speech tag feature (i.e., _*) was used to make this comparison. The underscore is used to search for parts-of-speech, and the asterisk uses wildcard functionality to search for all parts-of-speech, rather than isolated ones (e.g., only verbs or only nouns). Until the past couple decades, "address" was used far more frequently as a noun than a verb. There was a peak in the use of both forms around 2000, and the adjective form has been used barely at all throughout the entire timespan.
Battle of...
This graph is showing the 20 most common words following the phrase "Battle of" as it appeared between 1800 and today. The wildcard search (i.e., *) is what makes this comparison. "Battle of the" is by far the most common phrase out of all 20 over the entire timespan, and has been increasing steadily still since 1980.
Part 2
Word Cloud
Interesting & Insightful Tools
My favorite tool was the mandala tool. It allowed you to input specific words, which then acted as "magnets" towards which the first word of the text was drawn. The more frequently the word appeared in the text, the stronger the magnet was, and the closer the first word of the text got to that magnet. I looked at the "strength" of the first names of every main character in the novel.
I also liked the bubble tool. It read through every single word of the text in real time, and created individual bubbles for the most common words. As it went through the text, the more times a word appeared, the larger its bubble became. The speed at which this tool worked was shocking, especially considering it took me 3 months to finish The Picture of Dorian Gray vs. just a number of minutes. (The tool is continuous, but here is a screenshot of it about halfway through the book & one about 2/3 of the way through, for comparison)
Part 3
Positive and Negative: "Wicked" receives a score of -2. It's a synonym for "evil" but also has a positive connotation when used as New England slang. "Screwed" has a score of -2 because it's another way of saying "I'm in trouble," but you could also be talking about the lid of a jar.
Incorrect Weight: "Silly" is scored as -1, but I think it is quite a neutral term. I would most likely use it to describe a child who is having fun/goofing off, but even if I used it to describe an older person or another thing altogether, it isn't exactly a biting insult. "Gross" has a score of -2, but that seems to only account for the more colloquial use of the word when describing something undesirable. It also describes total profits and incomes.
Lines from Sonnet 130 by Shakespeare
(A sonnet about a man loving a woman even though she's unattractive according to all beauty standards)
Both Correct:
Sentence 1: I grant, I never saw a goddess go...
Sentence 2: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare.
Very Different:
Sentence 1: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.
Sentence 2: I have seen roses damasked, red and white... yet no such roses see I in her cheeks.
Both Incorrect:
Sentence 1: And in some perfumes is there more delight, than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
Sentence 2: I love to hear her speak, yet well I know that music hath a far more pleasing sound.
Part 4
Good Translations
Opening of A Brave New World: A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, community, identity, stability.
Opening of The Help: Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning.
Bad Translations
"Stuck between a rock and a hard place" becomes "stuck between a hammer and an anvil" when translated into French.
"Don't beat around the bush" becomes "Don't turn around the pot" when translated into French.
The translation services generally work quite well. Google Translate was the best out of the three, and I was surprised that they all translated the purposefully broken English in The Help quite accurately. The most noticeable difference between the services was how they translated articles, which are often a point of confusion for a lot of English-speakers learning French. Interesting to see that the machines and people get caught up on the same things.
Part 5
Red or Green Apples? I took pictures of myself eating a red apple and some eating a green apple. I chose these samples to see if the computer would notice something as subtle as the color of an apple. I started with only 10 sample images and it worked perfectly.
Gourds In my second experiment, I placed two different miniature gourds on my head. One was round and red, and the other was tall and orange. The computer had a lot more difficulty differentiating between which gourd was on my head than it did with apple colors, even though I used more image samples. I worked up to 50, and the machine was better but still struggled a bit.
