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Weiye Loh

Victorian Literature, Statistically Analyzed With New Process - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...04victorian.html

Literature Statistics Content Analysis

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • A decline in references to “God,” “Christian” and “universal” is consonant with the conventional view that the 19th century was a time of rising secularism and skepticism.
  • Yet large searches can also challenge some pet theories of close reading, he said: for example, that the Victorians were obsessed with the nature and origins of evil. As it turns out, books with the word “evil” in the title bumped along near the bottom of the graph, accounting for less than 0.1 percent — a thousandth — of those published during the Victorian era.
  • As Mr. Cohen is quick to acknowledge, the meaning of those numbers is anything but clear. Perhaps authors didn’t like to use the word “evil” in the title; perhaps there were other, more common synonyms; perhaps the context points to another subject altogether.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Ms. Martin at Princeton knows firsthand how electronic searches can unearth both obscure texts and dead ends. She has spent the last 10 years compiling a list of books, newspaper and journal articles about the technical aspects of poetry. She recalled finding a sudden explosion of the words “syntax” and “prosody” in 1832, suggesting a spirited debate about poetic structure. But it turned out that Dr. Syntax and Prosody were the names of two racehorses.
  • Weiye Loh on 04 Dec 10
     
    A decline in references to "God," "Christian" and "universal" is consonant with the conventional view that the 19th century was a time of rising secularism and skepticism.
Weiye Loh

Victorian Literature, Statistically Analyzed With New Process - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04victorian.html

Literature Statistics Content Analysis

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • The titles of every British book published in English in and around the 19th century — 1,681,161, to be exact — are being electronically scoured for key words and phrases that might offer fresh insight into the minds of the Victorians.
  • This research, which has only recently become possible, thanks to a new generation of powerful digital tools and databases, represents one of the many ways that technology is transforming the study of literature, philosophy and other humanistic fields that haven’t necessarily embraced large-scale quantitative analysis.
  • There is also anxiety, however, about the potential of electronic tools to reduce literature and history to a series of numbers, squeezing out important subjects that cannot be easily quantified.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Some scholars are wary of the control an enterprise like Google can exert over digital information. Google’s plan to create a voluminous online library and store has raised alarms about a potential monopoly over digital books and the hefty pricing that might follow. But Jon Orwant, the engineering manager for Google Books, Magazines and Patents, said the plan was to make collections and searching tools available to libraries and scholars free. “That’s something we absolutely will do, and no, it’s not going to cost anything,” he said.
  • Mr. Houghton sought to capture what he called a “general sense” of how middle- and upper-class Victorians thought, partly by closely reading scores of texts written during the era and methodically counting how many times certain words appeared. The increasing use of “hope,” “light” and “sunlight,” for instance, was interpreted as a sign of the Victorians’ increasing optimism.
Krista S

Industry Statistics - Worldwide Internet users grow their time spent online - Internet ... - 0 views

www.internetretailer.com/...s-grow-their-time-spent-online

shared by Krista S on 16 Jun 10 - Cached
  • December 13, 2002
  • U.S. consumers were online the next longest times, spending 12 hours, 6 minutes on the Internet
Neal C

Want Smart Kids? Here's What to Do - Percolator - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...24200

shared by Neal C on 28 May 10 - Cached
  • Thus it seems that scholarly culture, and the taste for books that it brings, flows from generation to generation largely of its own accord, little affected by education, occupational status, or other aspects of class
    • Neal C
      Neal C on 28 May 10
       
      Books matter...physical, tangible things
  • I wonder what e-book readers like the Kindle will mean to these statistics. On the plus side, a lot of e-books are free and those that aren't are often discounted, so a family with a Kindle might be able to afford more books (assuming they can pony up for the device). But the books aren't as easy to share and you probably don't want your 5-year-old dribbling juice onto your fancy expensive gadget.
    • Neal C
      Neal C on 28 May 10
       
      Does online competency indicate to children the same priority on education or scholarship?
  • Want Smart Kids? Here's What to Do Buy a lot of books.
    • Neal C
      Neal C on 28 May 10
       
      Want smart kids? Get books, not the internet (at least until someone does a similar study on the internet).
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • onducted over 20 years, in 27 countries, and surveyed more than 70,000 people. Resea
Carlie Wallentine

E-book Sales Stats - 0 views

publishingperspectives.com/...es-statistics-from-bisg-survey

ebooks publishing

shared by Carlie Wallentine on 27 May 11 - Cached
  • Carlie Wallentine on 27 May 11
     
    A short article about the rise of e-book sales.
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