Summary and Schedule
This lesson teaches the student how to use a Python-based, command-line tool called the Distant Reader Toolbox. The purpose of the Toolbox is to enable students, researchers, or scholars the abilty to apply data science computing techniques against arbitrarily large volumes of text.
Each episodes ought to take no more than thirty minutes to complete, and since there are E episodes, working through the entire lesson ought to take E * .5 hours to complete. :-D
This lesson built with The Carpentries Workbench.
| Setup Instructions | Download files required for the lesson | |
| Duration: 00h 00m | 1. What is the Reader? | What is the Distant Reader, and why should I care? |
| Duration: 00h 12m | 2. Quick start | Really fast, what are some of the thing the Reader can do? |
| Duration: 00h 24m | 3. Configure | How do I configure my Reader’s environment |
| Duration: 00h 36m | 4. List words | What words exist in a study carrel |
| Duration: 00h 48m | 5. Browse the public library | What study carrels exist? |
| Duration: 01h 00m | 6. Build your library | How can I create a local collection of study carrels |
| Duration: 01h 12m | 7. List words, revisited | What is the vocabulary of your set of local data sets |
| Duration: 01h 24m | 8. Other - Wordle | What study carrels exist? |
| Duration: 01h 36m | 9. Other - Antconc | What study carrels exist? |
| Duration: 01h 48m | 10. Other - OpenRefine | What study carrels exist? |
| Duration: 02h 00m | 11. Other - Topic Modeling Tool | What study carrels exist? |
| Duration: 02h 12m | 12. Other - Gephi | How can I visualize network graphs using data exported from the Reader? |
| Duration: 02h 24m | Finish |
The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.
Data Sets
We will be using a dataset comprised of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as translated by Samuel Butler.
Software Setup
Software setup ought to be, at most, a two-step process (“famous last words”):
Make sure a sane verion of Python is installed on your computer, and if you don’t know how to address such a thing, then it is strongly suggested you install Anaconda.
From the command line, install a set of Python-based command-line tools called the Distant Reader Toolbox:
pip install reader-toolbox.