Distant Reader - iraq-from-hathi

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 2021-02-15 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader trust process, and the input was a HaithTrust metadata (TSV) file locally cached with the name metadata.tsv. Given the metadata file, associated PDF documents where saved to a a cache and a second set of documents were saved to a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against the 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

The study carrel is 12,894,928 words long. Each item in the study carrel is, on average, 42,698 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 illustrate the overall size of the study 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 67. 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 illustrate the overall readability of the study 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:

iraq, one, will, iraqi, mr, see, iz, time, two, also, us, government, think, may, security, now, people, general, forces, well, made, country, united, many, first, great, military, war, ppl, states, much, new, chairman, like, senator, going, said, part, even, years, way, just, long, baghdad, state, know, place, political, national, three

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are: 1) Securing America''s interest in Iraq : the remaining options : hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Tenth Congress, first session, January 10, 11, 17, 18, 23, 25, 30, 31, and February 1, 2007 4.F 76/2:S.HRG.110-153, 2) Operations and reconstruction efforts in Iraq : Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eighth Congress, second session, hearings held January 28, April 21, May 7, 21, June 16, 17, 22, July 7, September 8, 9, 9, 2004 4.AR 5/2 A:2003-2004/28, and 3) Iraq after the surge : hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Tenth Congress, second session, April 2, 3, 8, and 10, 2008 4.F 76/2:S.HRG.110-757.

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

united states, li li, security forces, iraqi government, oo oo, saddam hussein, united nations, middle east, iraqi security, security council, mass destruction, iraqi people, prime minister, national security, new york, iraqi army, nuclear weapons, state department, persian gulf, general petraeus, intelligence community, iz mc, iz ne, american people, human rights, civil war, prepared statement, iraqi forces, british museum, pv nh, coalition forces, armed forces, iz pv, right now, iz mb, iz nd, li lt, saudi arabia, iz ma, gulf war, mf nj, years ago, foreign policy, iz le, chemical weapons, iz mf, iraqi police, sectarian violence, will continue, lt li

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are: 1) Securing America''s interest in Iraq : the remaining options : hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Tenth Congress, first session, January 10, 11, 17, 18, 23, 25, 30, 31, and February 1, 2007 4.F 76/2:S.HRG.110-153, 2) Iraq after the surge : hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Tenth Congress, second session, April 2, 3, 8, and 10, 2008 4.F 76/2:S.HRG.110-757, and 3) Hearings to examine threats, responses, and regional considerations surrounding Iraq : hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Seventh Congress, second session, July 31 and August 1, 2002.

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 study carrel include:

iraq, united states, mr. chairman, iraqi government, saddam hussein, iraq today, iraqi people, united nations, iraq war, united states government, iraqi army, northern iraq, u.s. government, u.s., southern iraq, iraqi force, tigris, iraqis, new iraq, iraqi security forces, state department, persian gulf, iraq reconstruction, iraq policy, democratic iraq, euphrates, babylon, arabs, middle east, baghdad, iraqi security, iran iraq war, central iraq, iraqi prime minister, united nations security, saddam iraq, nineveh, iraqi military, iraq government, kurdish, american, western iraq, security council resolution, mr. secretary, mr., mosul, iraq study group, iran, great city, god

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 iraq, and A 6-month periodic report on the national emergency with respect to Iraq : communication from the President of the United States transmitting a 6-month periodic report on the national emergency with respect to Iraq that was declared in Executive Order 12722 of August 2, 1990, pursuant to 50 U.S.C. 1703(c). 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 your 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:

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

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of the 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?":

°, time, people, country, forces, government, security, p., years, part, way, war, place, number, weapons, year, city, day, water, question, fact, oil, river, power, policy, point, name, force, world, troops, side, men, work, information, king, support, tion, state, end, today, town, region, course, program, man, village, process, use, con-, efforts

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, have, are, be, were, had, been, has, do, see, think, made, being, did, going, said, know, 's, thank, make, found, take, say, get, called, go, want, used, am, does, believe, having, come, given, need, came, let, seen, 're, put, taken, give, known, done, provide, including, left, took, according

Proper Nouns

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

Iraq, Mr., U.S., United, PPL, General, Senator, al, States, Baghdad, N138, Chairman, Iraqis, Saddam, Iran, Secretary, President, Department, Government, NH38, II, Dr., Security, Al, Council, East, State, Army, Ambassador, Kurds, Tigris, Iraqi, National, Arabs, Babylon, ., •, Euphrates, LI, Hussein, Congress, pp, Mosul, Defense, Gulf, i., Syria, Committee, vol, NJ38

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, i, we, they, you, their, his, he, our, its, them, my, us, me, him, your, her, she, themselves, himself, itself, one, myself, ourselves, thee, thy, 's, herself, yourself, mine, yours, ours, theirs, ex-, our-, be-, thyself, pos-, ye, it's, i'm, as-, s, evi-, thou, oneself, orna-, i-, him-, ther

Below are words cloud of the 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 this study carrel positive or negative?"

iraqi, other, many, great, more, such, new, military, political, same, first, large, own, important, little, small, good, long, last, few, several, american, high, -, able, much, most, national, arab, nuclear, second, general, foreign, economic, old, international, assyrian, ancient, different, clear, possible, certain, kurdish, various, present, former, early, next, difficult, least

not, so, very, also, now, more, up, as, only, out, here, well, then, even, just, n't, most, however, there, still, much, about, down, again, far, back, probably, on, almost, already, too, first, thus, never, in, rather, really, once, often, perhaps, off, over, together, long, away, all, always, yet, generally, therefore

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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