Counting for Humanists Andrew Goldstone (http://andrewgoldstone.com) Wednesday, April 30, 2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Academic disciplines (and even interdisciplines or hybrids) are relational entitites; they must define themselves by what they are not. And what literary studies is not is a “counting” discipline. This negative relation to numbers is traditional— foundational, even—and it has not been seriously challenged by the rise of interdisciplinarity….Literary studies has shouldered much of the burden of…defending qualitative models and strategies against the naïve or cynical quantitative paradigm that has become the doxa of higher-educational management. Under these institutional circumstances, antagonism toward counting has begun to feel like an urgent struggle for survival. James English, “Everywhere and Nowhere: The Sociology of Literature After ‘the Sociology of Literature,’ ” NLH 41, no. 2 (Spring 2010): xii–xiii. shall we count? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
shall we count? Academic disciplines (and even interdisciplines or hybrids) are relational entitites; they must define themselves by what they are not. And what literary studies is not is a “counting” discipline. This negative relation to numbers is traditional— foundational, even—and it has not been seriously challenged by the rise of interdisciplinarity….Literary studies has shouldered much of the burden of…defending qualitative models and strategies against the naïve or cynical quantitative paradigm that has become the doxa of higher-educational management. Under these institutional circumstances, antagonism toward counting has begun to feel like an urgent struggle for survival. James English, “Everywhere and Nowhere: The Sociology of Literature After ‘the Sociology of Literature,’ ” NLH 41, no. 2 (Spring 2010): xii–xiii. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
what shall we count? favorite author female (%) male (%) Stephen King 17.5 35.9 Wilbur Smith 3.0 23.5 Agatha Christie 11.0 7.2 Danielle Steel 13.0 0.3 Jeffrey Archer 8.1 9.1 Virginia Andrews 11.9 0.8 Catherine Cookson 11.0 0.9 Sidney Sheldon 3.7 3.1 Bryce Courtenay 3.2 2.7 Tom Clancy 1.5 11.6 Table: Australian readers’ favorite authors, by gender, from Tony Bennett et al., Accounting for Tastes (Cambridge UP, 1999), 151. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Figure 6: Book imports into India 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 Thousands of pounds sterling. Source: Priya Joshi, In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India , New York 2002. Figure reprinted in Franco Moretti, “Graphs, Maps, Trees,” NLR 24 (Nov.-Dec. 2003): 75. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Tomas","Tranströmer","Sweden" "Mo","Yan","China" "Alice","Munro","Canada" "firstname","surname","bornCountry" comma-separated values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
the norms of CSV ▶ plain-text file for tabular data ▶ delimiter separates columns (usually , or a tab) ▶ newline separates rows ▶ names of columns in first row (optional) ▶ tricky bits: ▶ what if a data point contains a comma? ▶ what if a data point contains a quotation mark? ▶ what text-encoding should be used? ▶ how do you know what rules have been followed? (There is RFC 4180, but no promises.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
844,Herta,Müller,1953-08-17,0000-00-00,Romania,RO,"Nitzkydorf, Banat",,,,female,2009 id,firstname,surname,born,died,bornCountry,bornCountryCode,bornCity,diedCountry,diedCountryCode,diedCity,gender,year 892,Alice,Munro,1931-07-10,0000-00-00,Canada,CA,Wingham,,,,female,2013 801,Harold,Pinter,1930-10-10,2008-12-24,"United Kingdom",UK,London,"United Kingdom",UK,London,male,2005 880,Mo,Yan,0000-00-00,0000-00-00,China,CN,Gaomi,,,,male,2012 808,Orhan,Pamuk,1952-06-07,0000-00-00,Turkey,TR,Istanbul,,,,male,2006 868,Tomas,Tranströmer,1931-04-15,0000-00-00,Sweden,SE,Stockholm,,,,male,2011 817,Doris,Lessing,1919-10-22,2013-11-17,"Persia (now Iran)",IR,Kermanshah,"United Kingdom",UK,London,female,2007 854,Mario,"Vargas Llosa",1936-03-28,0000-00-00,Peru,PE,Arequipa,,,,male,2010 832,"Jean-Marie Gustave","Le Clézio",1940-04-13,0000-00-00,France,FR,Nice,,,,male,2008 people Source: requests to api.nobelprize.org . See http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelmedia/nobelprize_ org/developer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and,305 to,224 it,75 that,86 WORDCOUNTS,WEIGHT as,101 the,766 new,101 of,482 a,195 in,259 words Source: a wordcounts CSV file from a http://dfr.jstor.org request. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And what can’t be? affordances What kinds of data can be accommodated in this format? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
affordances What kinds of data can be accommodated in this format? And what can’t be? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
data types: simple: numerical ▶ Whole numbers (integer scale). How many (books, people, words, genres…)? ▶ Real numbers (interval scale). How much (distance, time, money…)? Special cases: ▶ percentages or proportions (ratio scale). How much of the total (population, corpus of texts…)? ▶ dates. When? (And does the day, month, year, decade, century… matter?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
data types: simple: categorical ▶ Unordered. Which of… (languages, nations, genders(?))? Special cases: ▶ binary or Boolean category: true or false, yes or no. ▶ many categories (headwords in the dictionary, authors in the catalogue). ▶ Ordinal. Which (letter of the alphabet, sales rank, “like, dislike, or neutral”)? Categories to numbers ▶ true: 1, false: 0 ▶ like: 1, neutral: 0, dislike: -1 ▶ like: 2, neutral: 1, dislike: 0 ▶ a: 1, b: 2, c: 3… (character encoding) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice Munro Tranströmer Sweden firstname: Alice, Mo, Tomas Tomas surname: Munro, Yan, Tranströmer China bornCountry: Canada, China, Sweden Yan firstname surname Mo bornCountry Canada data types: compound The list / the series 17.5, 3.0, 11.0, 13.0, 8.1, 11.9, 11.0, 3.7, 3.2, 1.5 The list of lists / the table (more elaborate possibilities exist…) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
<p>Haplesse <name>Egeon</name> whom the fates haue markt...</p> O, n, c, e, *space*, u, p, o, n, *space*, a, *space*, <sp who="#Salinus"><speaker>Duke.</speaker> t, i, m, e and text? a (looooong) list of characters (a “string”): other representations ▶ the bag of words (to: 2, be: 2, or: 1, not: 1) ▶ content analysis (automated, human, or semi-automated) ▶ marked-up text ▶ parsed trees ▶ page images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2. A computer performs calculations on numbers and stores the results of those calculations. 3. If the inputs, outputs, and the formal description can be encoded as numbers, a program can be executed on a computer. programming in a nutshell 1. A program is a formal description of a process for transforming data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. If the inputs, outputs, and the formal description can be encoded as numbers, a program can be executed on a computer. programming in a nutshell 1. A program is a formal description of a process for transforming data. 2. A computer performs calculations on numbers and stores the results of those calculations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
programming in a nutshell 1. A program is a formal description of a process for transforming data. 2. A computer performs calculations on numbers and stores the results of those calculations. 3. If the inputs, outputs, and the formal description can be encoded as numbers, a program can be executed on a computer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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