BN – Data Cultures

Posted on December 14, 2018 by BN

Guiding Principles for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable Data Publishing Version

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During an age when data is becoming generate as an increasing rate, standard practices of using this data need to be implemented to ensure the usability of this data. This paper explains the eScience ecosystem and the challenge behind regulating such a vast field with so many players. Creating free and usable data is key behind a robust research community.

User, ‘pippinev’, points out the meaning behind this paper in the following quote. ” It is important to note that this document is a general ‘guide to FAIRness of data’, not a ‘specification'”. This paper simply points out expect practices of creating and sharing data. FAIR stands for the, “Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable” methods of data. There remains much debate as to the best practices to share and maintain data, but there are some key underlying beliefs. But, “the methods to access and/or download [data] should be well described and preferably fully automated and using well established protocols.” When we look at dataset of small size, such as ones used in class with 100 rows or less this remains less important. Yet, when we collect and share public dataset of millions of rows that can be used for public benefit, it becomes important to create an MLA style process for sharing this data. We all look forward to discovering the incites of big data, assuming we can analyze it! #FAIR

Posted on December 14, 2018 by BN

Developing Things (Ramsay, Rockwell)

The core debate behind this paper is whether scholarly work published in print or online holds the same significance in the academic community. During a rapid period of digital change taking place within our world, certain areas of change experience moral debate as they shift. Another issue present in this article is how analysis taking place compares to conventional analysis. It is noted that people try and define a “computer” and thus, all following work either created on that computer or published in digital form compares to paper copy.

Since no users have commented on this article, I will expand by analysis on the following quote, “the question, rather, is whether the manipulation of features, objects, and states of interest using the language of coding or programming (however abstracted by graphical systems) constitutes theorizing. The main debate here mentions the assistance of tools a computer gives a user, and thus not as important as free-hand writing. Questioning the difference between coding and writing language as the same act, even more important, do they hold the same level of significance in the academic community. Beyond the specifics of this article is to mention the amazing debate that occurs when an industry becomes shocked by innovation.

Posted on December 14, 2018 by BN

Urban Electoral Coalitions in the Age of Immigration

This paper comments on the structure of the political system, specifically the relationship between minority groups and their need to increase their limited political experience. When a minority candidate looks to run for office, the need the support of a major political party or various other groups to, “obtain the political resources needed to win a share of urban power”. User ‘pippinev’ finds this above quote important as it further explains the power dynamics within out political system. We would hope that any person who wishes to fun for office has ample resources to demonstrate their ideas on a national scale. This however clearly remains untrue.

Within the introduction, we find that geography is a key driver behind the relationship minority public service members hold with their communities. We look at the factors, “macro-level processes that influence a city of region”. The expected outcomes of minority candidates is driven mainly by the geographic region they live within. When the number of immigrants is high in that region, the expected change of winning the vote will increase, and therefore decrease the dependance a minority candidate needs from major party leaders.

Multiple spacial mapping techniques are used to demonstrate these outcomes and offer additional incite about projected political outcomes in the future. This paper takes a very specific method to defining the relationship all candidates hold with their district. The key lesson from this paper is to see the meaningful information we can derive from seemingly soft topics such as politics by using hard computer analysis.

Posted on November 8, 2018 by BN

The Southern Rite of Human Sacrafice

This rather unique article shine light on the history of lynching. Donald Mathews argues, “that lynching can be understood as a religious ritual, a symbolic act as pregnant with religious meanings as with political meanings.” Furthermore, the history if lynching is our course conversational, yet in order to have clear and honest debate about its significance in American history, it remains necessary to find the facts. They key findings from state that, “the demographics, economics, seasons, and politics of lynching were patterned and correlated statistically to establish trends.”

‘jnichols99’ seems to find the following findings important. “the demographics, economics, seasons, and politics of lynching were patterned and correlated statistically to establish trends” and “Just as a data visualization reveals the pattern of the points plotted more readily than it reveals the people behind those data points”. I also agree that this point of the article is key at bringing data to life, a trend we have seen in many other articles this semester. We continue to find interesting questions, highly clogged with disorganized data, hiding all important incite. And specifically relating to this historical context, it is necessary to bring some clarity to a topic with such historical relevance.

Posted on November 6, 2018 by BN

Graphical Approaches to the Digital Humanities

For this week, we read the article, Graphical Approaches to the Digital Humanities by Johnna Drucker. The first main point to outline are the different types of graphical representations that are used. The following is a short list of potential mediums to display data, many being used across the same data which might reveal different incites. A few forms to mention are: pie charts, scatter plots, bar charts, network diagrams, tree diagrams, etc. We also not the evolution of these certain graphical representations through the years. We can assume that over time, different methods were created to display the same data in new and unique ways. For example, bar charts were a rather new addition to the forms of graphical representation. Bar charts were invented and first used in the fields of accounting and statistics.

Further commenting on ‘sjaloway’ work, we note the following block of text from the article, “From a critical point of view, however, the message is more skeptical and suggests a radical rethinking of the epistemological assumptions that the statisticians have bequeathed us. The fault is not with the source, since it is the borrowing for humanistic projects that is problematic, not the statistical graphics themselves. They work just fine for statistical matters (Borner, 2010). There is an important like between the humanities and the underlying statistics of graphical representation. In many cases, the underlying statistics can account for the accuracy in the data and the following interpretations may be wrong. This alludes to the importance to choose the proper medium to display data and be sure the your following conclusions on that data align with the unbiased incite.

Posted on October 29, 2018 by BN

Text Analysis

The following article by Lauren Klein expressed both an interesting historical story and the significance of text analysis under these conditions. Lauren Klein prefaces the story by outlining the relationship between Jefferson and his servant James. Regarding text analysis, we see to determine the true relationship between James and Jefferson and specifically, in regards to the debate over freedom.

User ‘ecullen’, highlights the line, “one of the information that I’ve just told you is immediately evident in the letter on the screen”, which in context, is emphasizing the significance that certain phrases might not be picked up unless a full text analysis has taken place. The text that is under debate here is the phrase, “former servant James”, which as we now know, is directly referring to Jeffersons former servant James Hemings. Moving forward, we not power of text analysis, and as the analysis itself cannot help us understand the meaning behind phrases, we do note the amazing findings that can follow a change in understanding of an article with the discovery of a new word or term.

Posted on October 25, 2018 by BN

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is a unique approach to extract information and digest the results from a collection of documents. This article defines topic modeling as, understanding “buckets of words,” and providing seductive but obscure results in the forms of easily interpreted (and manipulated) “topics.” There remain many tools within the field of topic modeling, and specifically, in new tools under the category of machine learning. From the article, we note, “The work in this issue integrates the Natural Language Processing technique of topic modeling with network representation, GIS, and information visualization. This approach takes advantage of the growing accessibility of tools and methods that had until recently required great resources (technical, professional, and financial).” With new and more accessible tools, we expect topic modeling to be used more widespread.

A main concern of topic modeling is that is the usefulness and easy of use for topic modeling tools. In this article, “none of the authors in this issue simply run and accept the results as “useful” or “interesting” for humanities scholarship. Instead, they critically wrestle with the process. Their work is done with as much of a focus on what the computational techniques obscure as reveal.” The next steps for topic modeling will be to ensure that we can reveal useful information that is conclusive for the process of analysis, with far more accuracy and efficiency than we see in hand-process techniques.

Posted on October 23, 2018 by BN

Text Analysis and Visualization

The power of text is stressed. A clear understanding should be laid as the power of text remains, even as other forms of visual contact take off. As million of hours of Youtube and other visual digital forms are uploaded by the minute, most is categorized by text, a major feature that we ca use to visualize the relationship and frequency these text terms hold with one another. “It is estimated that every day some 200 billion emails are sent and some 5 billion Google search queries are performed – and they are nearly all text-based.” Can we take this information and create a digital image? Create a way to represent data?

In the process of trying to understand these text files, we follow the process of turning “bits and bytes” into a structured “format and markup” which should allow us to visualize and conclude on results of the data. In a simple case of text visualization, a word mashup can be used, and their remain multiple digital software available to make this easy. Although this will not instill a mathematical way to determine the relationship between items, it stands for a great way to briefly visualize data. In a concluding thought, we can gain new incite from the distribution and frequency of words, such as in the case of Alice and Wonderland.

Posted on October 4, 2018 by BN

Test Post Number 1

Hey again, checking in here to see if this thing is even working.

Posted on September 25, 2018 by BN

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