Monday, February 16, 2009

What are the Prominent Words in a Text?

Use Tag Cloud to aid in finding the prominents words in your long readings now!

From Answers.com:
A tag cloud or word cloud (or weighted list in visual design) is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag.

BUT... (in my opinions) They are not so helpful.
[See both tag clouds above: First one is tag cloud of the original text and second one is tag cloud of the summary I've written for the text]

The words “Applicatio-Media-Theory” are the prominent key words in my cloud. The words omitted were “author-bardzell-Jeffery-book-claims-primer-read-work-expect-experience”.

Omitted words appeared in the original tag cloud clearly because of repetitiveness.

“Media” and “theory” are dominant in both clouds because they are the main topic of the article.

Both tag clouds are ill representation of the text. In the original, redundant words were listed as prominent, evidenced by the appearance of synonyms “book, work” and the author name. While in my summary, it fails to note other key points in the summary (“usefulness” is one word that should be included, which would immediately indicate the subjective bias of the author towards the topic.)

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