12-20-2010, 05:30 AM
Google has developed an interesting search tool for all the books it has scanned. Here is a Wall Street Journal article about it and here is the actual tool:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com
Now a person can find the frequency of words in published texts. This could conceivably be used for all sorts of things, like linguistic, censorship or political studies. I've been playing with it to see how the popularity of Roman personalities have changed during time. For instance, Julius Caesar's relative popularity seems to have peaked circa 1810 but has been rather stable. Poor Marcus Aurelius seems to have hit his high-water mark about 1905 and has been sliding, more or less, ever since.
You can also compare terms, such as the relative popularity of "Eastern Roman Empire" versus "Byzantine Empire."
This could probably be used for all sorts of historical studies.
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com
Now a person can find the frequency of words in published texts. This could conceivably be used for all sorts of things, like linguistic, censorship or political studies. I've been playing with it to see how the popularity of Roman personalities have changed during time. For instance, Julius Caesar's relative popularity seems to have peaked circa 1810 but has been rather stable. Poor Marcus Aurelius seems to have hit his high-water mark about 1905 and has been sliding, more or less, ever since.
You can also compare terms, such as the relative popularity of "Eastern Roman Empire" versus "Byzantine Empire."
This could probably be used for all sorts of historical studies.
David J. Cord
www.davidcord.com
www.davidcord.com