{"id":420,"date":"2015-10-30T02:54:32","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T02:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/?p=420"},"modified":"2015-10-30T02:54:32","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T02:54:32","slug":"language-quantification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"Language Quantification"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"quantify\"I spend a lot of time in my day job quantifying things, and apparently this falls under one of the many things I do that other people think is cool, because, as with Global Positioning System work and wearing wrap-around sunglasses, I often find people doing it in inappropriate contexts. \u00a0Today I find yet another in a long line of people desperately trying to score language and grammar. \u00a0This time, it’s in the New York Times, and involves trying to figure out which works of literature the speeches of various politicians are most similar to<\/a>. \u00a0The method of comparison uses axes of “complexity” and “positivity” to classify both books and speeches. \u00a0I could delve into why these things are hard to quantify in language, and why it might not work, but we don’t really need to get into all that. \u00a0Besides, Language Log<\/a> is better at that than I’ll every be. \u00a0But there’s no need to get all clever about it; there are two much simpler ways to examine this whole thing.<\/p>\n

First, let’s look at\u00a0the results. \u00a0Are\u00a0Ted Cruz’s speeches similar, in any meaningful or useful way, to\u00a0Beowulf? \u00a0Has anyone ever listened to Bernie Sanders speak and thought it sounded like James Joyce’s Ulysses? \u00a0No. \u00a0The answer is no. \u00a0So the final results don’t help much.<\/p>\n

But heck, let’s also look at the axes of the graph. \u00a0Is Peter Pan<\/em> really characterized by it’s relentlessly negative language? \u00a0Is the language in Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat<\/em> really simple? \u00a0Again, maybe in some sense, but from a purely practical sense, is that a useful<\/em> sense? \u00a0No. \u00a0So apparently the scoring system doesn’t really work, either.<\/p>\n

So there we go. \u00a0Back to counting personal pronouns<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spend a lot of time in my day job quantifying things, and apparently this falls under one of the many things I do that other people think is cool, because, as with Global Positioning System work and wearing wrap-around … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-writing-things","category-grammar-gripery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4qgvH-6M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}