Distant Reader - subject-education-freebo

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 2021-05-24 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set 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 31 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 1,193,667 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 38,505 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 87. 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:

haue, may, will, one, hee, great, good, bee, man, men, much, shall, also, many, things, time, yet, doe, first, make, children, well, say, without, thing, see, vnto, life, god, others, wee, onely, take, must, made, know, little, now, therefore, like, princes, let, world, learning, rome, reason, way, words, vs, common

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Archontorologion, or The diall of princes containing the golden and famous booke of Marcus Aurelius, sometime Emperour of Rome. Declaring what excellcncy [sic] consisteth in a prince that is a good Christian: and what euils attend on him that is a cruell tirant. Written by the Reuerend Father in God, Don Antonio of Gueuara, Lord Bishop of Guadix; preacher and chronicler to the late mighty Emperour Charles the fift. First translated out of French by Thomas North, sonne to Sir Edward North, Lord North of Kirthling: and lately reperused, and corrected from many grosse imperfections. With addition of a fourth booke, stiled by the name of The fauoured courtier., Ludus literarius: or, the grammar schoole shewing how to proceede from the first entrance into learning, to the highest perfection required in the grammar schooles, with ease, certainty and delight both to masters and schollars; onely according to our common grammar, and ordinary classical authours: begun to be sought out at the desire of some worthy fauourers of learning, by searching the experiments of sundry most profitable schoolemasters and other learned, and confirmed by tryall: intended for the helping of the younger sort of teachers, and of all schollars ..., and A consolation for our grammar schooles: or, a faithfull and most comfortable incouragement, for laying of a sure foundation of all good learning in our schooles, and for prosperous building thereupon More specially for all those of the inferiour sort, and all ruder countries and places; namely, for Ireland, Wales, Virginia, with the Sommer Ilands, and for their more speedie attaining of our English tongue by the same labour, that all may speake one and the same language. ....

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

may bee, many times, marcus aurelius, one thing, haue beene, common wealth, euery one, one day, early english, wee haue, english books, wise men, much lesse, wise man, euery man, roman non, every one, books online, oft times, shall bee, many things, set downe, wee see, every thing, haue done, must needs, hee shall, haue seene, let vs, hee will, shall haue, great lords, long time, without booke, wee may, brought vp, haue spoken, young men, will say, immortall gods, sweare vnto, page images, nothing else, shall see, times past, young man, haue learned, one onely, may see, creation partnership

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are To his Grace, his Majesties high commissioner, and the right honourable Estates of Parliament. The petition of the principal and masters of the Marishal Colledge of Aberdeen. To his Grace, his Majesties high commissioner, and the right honourable estates of Parliament. The petition of the principal and masters of the Marishal Colledge of Aberdeen., and Of education. To Master Samuel Hartlib..

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:

tcp, man, master, god, children, world, thing, learning, lord, grammar, education, nature, english, church, men, latine, haue, great, common, art, universities, time, son, sciences, schoole, scholars, reason, prince, parents, law, latin, gentleman, father, country, chap, books, book, years, university, temple, soul, sir, sea, schools, schooles, rules, romanes, roman, plato, noble

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 haue, and To all fathers of noble families, and lovers of vertue. 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:

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?":

man, men, things, time, hee, thing, others, life, children, way, words, reason, end, nothing, world, part, day, times, themselues, death, knowledge, selfe, people, matter, place, one, word, women, house, manner, wealth, learning, euill, order, hath, person, none, nature, truth, yeares, booke, friend, euery, persons, heart, rest, case, doth, gods, care

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, be, are, was, were, have, had, haue, make, say, do, see, bee, being, take, made, know, did, let, come, been, doe, done, set, according, put, giue, neuer, am, speake, read, learned, found, vnto, called, brought, tell, said, think, taught, taken, hath, thinke, write, teach, bring, has, desire, concerning, find

Proper Nouns

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

thou, haue, god, bee, doe, wee, hee, 〉, rome, hath, princes, 〈, prince, ◊, c., latine, english, emperour, king, master, ●, gods, chap, grammar, lord, mee, children, owne, court, de, world, father, latin, thee, beene, philosopher, learning, church, law, vp, romanes, greeke, tcp, men, euery, loue, goe, romane, alexander, marcus

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, i, his, their, them, he, him, you, my, we, our, your, her, me, thy, thee, themselves, us, himself, she, its, vp, one, vnto, mine, theirs, ours, yours, ''em, hee, whereof, em, yee, ye, thēselues, ●, s, ëo, us''d, shou''d, non, hers, ''s, yrke, worthinesse, wil, vvhat, vs, vntill

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?"

great, other, good, many, such, more, much, little, same, first, common, true, most, wise, haue, own, best, young, able, better, greater, least, noble, whole, necessary, few, like, vertuous, new, greatest, small, long, old, excellent, high, proper, perfect, worthy, rich, short, last, second, present, particular, right, full, honest, ancient, sure, wee

not, so, then, also, more, very, well, most, much, onely, now, therefore, as, yet, only, first, thus, rather, too, out, together, there, up, here, never, especially, once, else, all, in, even, indeed, thereof, before, easily, vs, truly, afterwards, away, likewise, better, long, otherwise, finally, sometimes, often, forth, commonly, still, further

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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