Distant Reader - subject-gardening-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 8 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 788,708 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 98,588 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 99. 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:

trees, may, will, one, good, must, tree, first, well, fruit, great, two, time, little, much, shall, branches, earth, make, pear, ground, without, three, place, plant, long, yet, foot, every, many, part, roots, grow, seed, like, take, also, garden, best, small, fruits, made, now, set, four, plants, wood, end, second, winter

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The compleat gard''ner, or, Directions for cultivating and right ordering of fruit-gardens and kitchen-gardens with divers reflections on several parts of husbandry, in six books : to which is added, his treatise of orange-trees, with the raising of melons, omitted in the French editions / by the famous Monsr De La Quintinye ... ; made English by John Evelyn ... ; illustrated with copper plates., Sylva, or, A discourse of forest-trees, and the propagation of timber in His Majesties dominions as it was deliver''d in the Royal Society the XVth of October, MDCLXII upon occasion of certain quæries propounded to that illustrious assembly, by the Honourable the Principal Officers, and Commissioners of the Navy : to which is annexed Pomona, or, An appendix concerning fruit-trees in relation to cider, the making, and severall wayes of ordering it published by expresse order of the Royal Society : also Kalendarivm hortense, or, the Gard''ners almanac, directing what he is to do monthly throughout the year / by John Evelyn ..., and A nevv orchard and garden, or, The best way for planting, grafting, and to make any ground good for a rich orchard particularly in the nor[th] and generally for the whole kingdome of England, as in nature, reason, situation and all probabilitie, may and doth appeare : with the country housewifes garden for hearbes of common vse, their vertues, seasons, profits, ornaments, varietie of knots, models for trees, and plots for the best ordering of grounds and walkes : as also the husbandry of bees, with their seuerall vses and annoyances, being the experience of 48 yeares labour ... / by William Lawson ; whereunto is newly added the art of propagating plants, with the tree ordering manner of fruits in their gathering, carring home & preseruation..

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

great deal, two hundred, hot beds, three hundred, will grow, four hundred, one another, one side, every one, latter end, let us, foot high, two foot, three foot, may say, great many, take away, every year, good earth, taken away, three years, one may, first year, will make, foot distance, well enough, thick branches, make use, two sorts, winter boncretien, put forth, will come, new branches, four foot, second place, years growth, new ones, described pag, four inches, two inches, every body, two years, long time, must needs, best way, take root, will take, without doubt, open air, six foot

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Of gardens four books first written in Latine verse by Renatus Rapinus ; and now made English by J.E. The Garden of Eden, or, An accurate description of all flowers and fruits now growing in England with particular rules how to advance their nature and growth, as well in seeds and herbs, as the secret ordering of trees and plants / by that learned and great observer, Sir Hugh Plat., and The compleat gard''ner, or, Directions for cultivating and right ordering of fruit-gardens and kitchen-gardens with divers reflections on several parts of husbandry, in six books : to which is added, his treatise of orange-trees, with the raising of melons, omitted in the French editions / by the famous Monsr De La Quintinye ... ; made English by John Evelyn ... ; illustrated with copper plates..

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:

garden, winter, tree, tcp, sun, spring, fruit, summer, seed, sap, plant, march, good, earth, chap, wood, white, water, trees, soil, scutcheon, roots, red, plants, pear, peach, orchard, moon, inches, groves, ground, great, flowers, branches, apples, air, year, world, work, woods, wine, winds, wall, violet, vessel, vales, treatise, timber, table, sunne

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 trees, and Profitable insructions [sic] for the manuring, sowing, and planting of kitchin gardens Very profitable for the common wealth and greatly for the helpe and comfort of poore people. Gathered by Richard Gardiner of Shrewsberie. 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?":

trees, time, branches, roots, part, tree, place, foot, seed, ground, end, fruit, plants, others, sorts, manner, leaves, years, s, earth, kind, ones, year, t, fruits, self, sort, order, wood, nothing, reason, way, thing, side, season, use, root, places, pear, plant, nature, things, quantity, body, length, inches, care, cider, p., beginning

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, have, being, make, do, were, grow, has, take, was, made, been, set, had, cut, see, say, let, having, planted, done, come, give, plant, put, said, find, taken, produce, know, begin, according, am, does, sow, did, keep, think, lay, called, found, bear, makes, stand, growing, preserve, sown, appear

Proper Nouns

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

c., s, trees, tree, fruit, pear, earth, garden, gardens, winter, pears, ground, wall, sap, peach, branch, 〉, white, ◊, chap, 〈, peaches, march, red, fruits, wood, branches, flower, sun, orange, august, dung, timber, water, foot, st., ●, apple, summer, may, april, green, plant, autumn, spring, plum, violet, nature, fathoms, kitchen

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, them, they, i, you, we, their, your, its, our, his, my, he, us, me, themselves, her, him, she, one, himself, thy, ''s, us''d, theirs, prun''d, ours, thee, mine, gard''ners, ''em, vp, yours, itself, whereof, l, shou''d, s, interr''d, ii, ha, ye, withthem, whosoever, whence, wedg''d, vvith, unrefin''d, u, thicknesse

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?"

good, other, great, such, little, first, same, many, more, small, best, second, much, new, least, long, thick, most, better, old, large, certain, full, dry, several, fine, last, whole, white, green, necessary, proper, third, high, young, particular, common, fit, few, greater, strong, short, sufficient, ripe, own, very, able, hot, true, fair

not, so, very, then, well, as, up, more, only, too, also, most, now, much, therefore, first, yet, out, thus, off, especially, never, likewise, even, sometimes, here, long, commonly, there, away, enough, again, all, soon, else, often, always, almost, down, in, pretty, together, otherwise, consequently, that, still, is, easily, already, indeed

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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