Distant Reader - classification-VK-gutenberg

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-28 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader gutenberg process, and the input was the result of a query applied to a local mirror of Project Gutenberg -- classification:"VK". Then, for future reference, the results were saved to a Zip file complete with rudimentary bibliographics. The name of the file is input-file.zip. The Zip file was then unpacked and the contents saved to a cache as well as a directory of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 15 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 532,123 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 44,343 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 77. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

boat, one, time, ship, men, will, vessel, life, water, sea, two, great, may, made, now, deck, board, first, crew, man, see, vessels, work, many, side, head, way, every, new, boats, end, must, long, line, make, ships, sail, rope, mr, get, away, also, course, well, part, wind, master, much, little, take

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Storm Warriors; or, Life-Boat Work on the Goodwin Sands, American Merchant Ships and Sailors, and Loss of the Steamship "Titanic".

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

united states, new york, let go, chief mate, second mate, new england, see plate, one hundred, per cent, boat deck, goodwin sands, poor fellows, standing part, boiler room, new orleans, observed altitude, see page, meridian altitude, years ago, feet long, many years, john ellerthorpe, advisory committee, starboard side, class passengers, true course, one side, engine room, saving appliances, made fast, head yards, hilaire method, great britain, marc st, two men, bad weather, boat men, merchant shipping, let us, log registered, fathom water, royal humane, per hour, storm warriors, tight compartments, deep water, working ship, broken water, one end, humber dock

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are American Merchant Ships and Sailors The Seaman''s Friend Containing a treatise on practical seamanship, with plates, a dictionary of sea terms, customs and usages of the merchant service, and Reminiscences of a Liverpool Shipowner, 1850-1920.

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

man, boat, vessel, ship, north, new, mr., illustration, british, wreck, united, time, states, sir, sidenote, sea, sands, ramsgate, island, institution, great, god, crew, chapter, captain, atlantic, york, yard, west, wave, water, ware, trade, titanic, sumner, storm, society, save, salem, sail, royal, rope, river, right, quadrant, plate, pet, orleans, ohio, northfleet

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be boat, and American Merchant Ships and Sailors is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

time, ship, new - Lectures in Navigation
vessel, ship, deck - The Seaman''s Friend Containing a treatise on practical seamanship, with plates, a dictionary of sea terms, customs and usages of the merchant service
boat, men, life - Storm Warriors; or, Life-Boat Work on the Goodwin Sands
mr, man, john - The Hero of the Humber; Or, The History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe
water, ships, ship - Reminiscences of a Liverpool Shipowner, 1850-1920

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

boat, ship, men, time, vessel, life, water, sea, deck, crew, man, vessels, board, side, way, boats, end, ships, rope, head, work, master, day, wind, sail, course, part, line, years, yard, feet, steamer, wreck, night, position, seas, captain, days, yards, weather, distance, anchor, sun, mate, port, trade, place, °, tide, latitude

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

is, was, be, are, were, have, had, been, has, made, see, do, being, make, get, take, go, put, said, used, called, did, found, let, saved, find, given, got, having, come, came, built, done, taken, set, seen, give, left, keep, went, carried, going, following, making, required, haul, sent, took, save, lost

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

_, |, mr., new, titanic, sands, north, john, w., england, united, c., states, island, god, bay, west, east, sir, a.m., lee, york, lo, institution, ramsgate, point, ellerthorpe, harbour, n., hull, south, great, st., captain, trade, c, w, london, lat, line, liverpool, board, atlantic, head, esq, r., ., star, cape, s

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

it, they, he, their, i, his, her, them, she, you, we, its, our, him, my, your, me, us, themselves, himself, itself, myself, herself, one, yours, yourself, ourselves, thy, thee, ours, theirs, ''em, mine, hers, ''s, wrote:--"i, theeself, neptune''ll, hav''nt

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

other, great, many, first, such, same, more, little, good, small, long, few, old, own, large, second, main, last, much, american, full, ready, high, british, heavy, poor, able, new, true, possible, necessary, short, lower, clear, tight, strong, chief, best, next, single, deep, third, right, light, several, most, whole, less, ordinary, dead

not, up, so, out, then, now, down, as, very, only, again, away, also, off, in, more, most, about, well, still, soon, almost, on, never, too, however, even, far, once, there, just, thus, forward, always, over, often, all, together, much, first, indeed, back, ever, perhaps, sometimes, fast, here, long, nearly, yet

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

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