Distant Reader - subject-fireworks-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 6 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 145,745 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 24,290 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 91. 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:

one, may, will, water, make, take, two, let, shall, fire, made, first, put, glasse, must, number, place, bee, little, many, end, another, rockets, like, great, rocket, much, line, pound, halfe, powder, part, also, vessell, set, three, point, foot, now, without, together, hole, composition, well, parts, haue, makes, figure, finde, placed

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Mathematicall recreations. Or, A collection of many problemes, extracted out of the ancient and modern philosophers as secrets and experiments in arithmetick, geometry, cosmographie, horologiographie, astronomie, navigation, musick, opticks, architecture, statick, mechanicks, chemistry, water-works, fire-works, &c. Not vulgarly manifest till now. Written first in Greeke and Latin, lately compi''ld in French, by Henry Van Etten, and now in English, with the examinations and augmentations of divers modern mathematicians whereunto is added the description and use of the generall horologicall ring: and the double horizontall diall. Invented and written by William Oughtred., The mysteryes of nature, and art conteined in foure severall tretises, the first of water workes the second of fyer workes, the third of drawing, colouring, painting, and engrauing, the fourth of divers experiments, as wel serviceable as delightful: partly collected, and partly of the authors peculiar practice, and invention by I.B., and A treatise of artificial fire-vvorks both for vvarres and recreation with divers pleasant geometricall obseruations, fortifications, and arithmeticall examples. In fauour of mathematicall students. Newly written in French, and Englished by the authour Tho: [sic] Malthus..

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

number thought, must bee, one may, one pound, will make, may bee, one end, bee made, shall see, inch rocket, one ounce, english books, early english, may see, set downe, shall bee, books online, right line, one side, equall parts, two ounces, third part, gunpowder dust, like manner, one foot, powder dust, faire water, may make, will remaine, little hole, giue fire, well together, may easily, one inch, take two, take fire, linseed oyle, water will, slow composition, early works, every day, text creation, creation partnership, aqua vitae, many times, distance betweene, every way, hundred thousand, may take, page images

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are At the Court at Whitehall this sixth day of November 1685 Present, the Kings most excellent Majesty. His Royal Highness Prince George.... Mr. Chancellour of the Dutchy. For the preventing tumultuous disorders, which may happen hereafter upon pretence of assembling, to make bonfires, and fire-works,... A modell of the fire-workes to be presented in Lincolnes-Inne fields on the 5th. of Novemb. 1647. Before the Lords and Commons of Parliament, and the militia of London, in commemoration of Gods great mercy in delivering this kingdome from the hellish plots of papists, acted in the damnable Gunpowder treason. With their present statues and proportions., and Mathematicall recreations. Or, A collection of many problemes, extracted out of the ancient and modern philosophers as secrets and experiments in arithmetick, geometry, cosmographie, horologiographie, astronomie, navigation, musick, opticks, architecture, statick, mechanicks, chemistry, water-works, fire-works, &c. Not vulgarly manifest till now. Written first in Greeke and Latin, lately compi''ld in French, by Henry Van Etten, and now in English, with the examinations and augmentations of divers modern mathematicians whereunto is added the description and use of the generall horologicall ring: and the double horizontall diall. Invented and written by William Oughtred..

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, rockets, glasse, water, vessell, treatise, table, sunne, south, sector, rocket, problem, prob, pipe, parliament, north, meridian, majesty, inches, inch, image, horizon, gold, fire, equinoctiall, composition, compasses, circle, chap, centre, cards, cannon, candle, bee, aire

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 water, and A treatise of artificial fire-vvorks both for vvarres and recreation with divers pleasant geometricall obseruations, fortifications, and arithmeticall examples. In fauour of mathematicall students. Newly written in French, and Englished by the authour Tho: [sic] Malthus. 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?":

water, fire, number, end, place, pound, line, part, halfe, point, foot, hole, composition, parts, figure, time, side, day, top, problem, manner, distance, powder, times, one, length, way, glasses, ounces, b, hand, weight, ▪, paper, vessell, rest, others, lines, dust, thing, numbers, man, pipe, inches, body, height, rockets, houre, aire, earth

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:

be, is, are, make, take, being, let, made, have, put, were, was, set, bee, having, makes, placed, see, had, draw, done, thought, finde, according, do, fill, taken, cast, come, filled, place, found, say, haue, give, passe, said, been, lay, required, seen, note, hang, following, did, shew, represented, adde, stand, divided

Proper Nouns

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

glasse, rockets, rocket, prob, c., ●, vessell, bee, 〉, c, ◊, chap, 〈, powder, tcp, inch, diameter, sunne, cards, a, centre, f, vvhich, b, iron, fire, ab, haue, brasse, hath, circle, sulphur, pipe, pag, downe, aire, north, peter, water, lesse, sun, london, horizon, followeth, equinoctiall, meridian, finde, english, d, candle

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, you, them, your, i, they, his, their, he, him, one, we, my, its, themselves, us, our, me, she, her, thy, whereof, theirs, thee, yours, whosoever, vp, u, thou, thinne, seethe, himself, herself, em

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, little, many, same, such, great, first, much, more, second, small, third, good, greater, full, whole, fine, former, right, double, last, true, hollow, long, like, lesser, equall, white, fourth, equal, upper, large, excellent, lower, strong, perpendicular, red, admirable, sufficient, square, round, high, best, dry, open, most, perfect, wise, pleasant, plaine

then, so, not, out, as, also, very, now, together, more, well, first, most, up, therefore, here, onely, thus, there, much, thereof, in, before, too, only, easily, that, is, else, somewhat, long, over, off, away, about, otherwise, forth, even, often, down, almost, exactly, afterwards, sometimes, once, neere, therein, still, secondly, likewise

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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