Wednesday, December 22, 2010

I Could Write A (Million) Book(s)

Have you played around with Google's Ngram yet? It's heaps of fun. You can search the 22 billion books that they have lovingly scanned, and learn lots of information about the occurrence of words throughout written history. Social Science!

For example, I was curious about who showed up in books more: Pearl Bailey, Shelley Winters, or Della Reese. Click on the images to embiggen them.

Go Shelley!

Also, which of the Golden Girls showed up the most in books? I think Betty White might be picking up a few extra points for her commonly-written last name, which is also a colour.


Here's a nice one I liked:
This one was interesting. I wonder if there's any causal relationship between the increase in occurrence of the first two words and that slight dip in the third? I may have to watch Rope again.

God Bless America and all its science!

1 comment:

ALH said...

This is a fascinating glimpse into your mind.