Wordle

I realize now that I didn't use the superb Wordle online text analysis website properly: my bad! Of course, one should always read the instructions completely and go over the different settings before using any software. The default graph shows only 150 words but this can be changed. Also, one can, for instance, have the words arranged more or less alphabetically: this facilitates finding specific words. Here are the complete settings I'll be using from now on:

• language:
  

remove nos.

remove common English words

• font:
  

Teen

• layout:
  

max. words: word count rounded up to the next thousand
prefer alphabetical order
rounder edges
horizontal

• color:
  

Wordly
a little variance

The following three posts have now been amended with the improved "word clouds":

• Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden vs. Glen Ifill (10-2-08)
  
• Barack Obama vs. John McCain vs. Jim Lehrer (9-26-08)
  
• Michelle Obama vs. Joe Biden vs. Barack Obama vs. Sarah Palin vs. Cindy McCain vs. John McCain (9-4-08)
  

Harvard University vs. United States Naval Academy vs. University of Idaho vs. University of Southern California vs. Syracuse University

As a sequel to our comparison of the two presidential teams and spouses yesterday, I faced off their alma maters. Luckily, both Michelle and Barack Obama attended the same university (Harvard) so that we don't go over Google Trends' limit of five terms. The other academic institutions are: Syracuse University (Biden), United States Naval Academy (John McCain), University of Idaho (Palin) and University of Southern California (Cindy McCain).


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "university of south... in all years.
"harvard university" 2.88
"united states naval... 0.06
"university of idaho... 0.62
"university of south... 1.00
"syracuse university... 1.46

It's no surprise that Harvard University has the highest Google-popularity, the US Naval Academy on the other hand is lower than I would have expected. Notice that all "civilian" universities see a downward trend.

Michelle Obama vs. Joe Biden vs. Barack Obama vs. Sarah Palin vs. Cindy McCain vs. John McCain

Tonight I changed the format: let's compare the convention speeches of the 2 main-party presidential tickets and the spouses. I took the transcripts from the official convention websites. I looked how many words they used. Also, how many sentences and characters (excl. spaces) did the speeches have? I summarized these three measures in a bubble graph:



Another way of comparing these "bunches" of words is by means of word clouds whereby the larger a word, the more frequently it occurs in the speech (using Wordle). They're all the rage, aren't they?


Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).




Copyright rklau (CC Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike license).




Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).




Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).




Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).




Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).


I'll let you draw your own conclusions this time.
Update 10-5-08: As I explain in this new post, Wordle has a lot more settings than I was aware of. Here are the improved, "corrected" word clouds.

Michelle Obama (improved)



Joe Biden (improved)



Barack Obama (improved)



Sarah Palin (improved)



Cindy McCain (improved)



John McCain (improved)