Tracking the Congressional Attention Span 89
Turismo writes "Ars Technica covers a new research project that uses computers to look at 70 million words from the Congressional Record. The project's goal was to track what our representatives were talking about at any given time, and researchers were able to do it without human training or intervention. From the article: '...researchers found, for instance, that "judicial nominations" have consumed steadily more Congressional attention between 1997 and 2004. In fact, the topic produced the most number of words published in a single "day" of the Congressional Record: 230,000 on November 12, 2003.' It looks like automated topic analysis has truly arrived."
TheyWorkForYou.com (Score:5, Informative)
Are there really that many speeches? TheyWorkForYou.com [theyworkforyou.com] offer a similar service for the UK's Houses of Parliament, except it's done manually, and there's only a dozen volunteers working on it.
Re:sophistication, ha? (Score:2, Informative)
Word frequency? That is primitive given the fact that there already tools that can parse the grammar of the sentence finding relations between words.
The CR is anything but accurate (Score:5, Informative)
Congressional Record vs. what's actually said... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, if you watch CSPAN while Congress is in session, in the evenings you'll see long stretches with just a few people who are delivering their rants into a nearly empty room. Can that be separated from the rest of the text?
Re:The CR is anything but accurate (Score:3, Informative)
However, they can't modify things that are already in the record (at least, not without being subjected to censure or other punishment).
Re:TheyWorkForYou.com (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Process Process Process (Score:3, Informative)
But the Congressional Record is faked (Score:4, Informative)
If you think the Congressional Record is an accurate account of what happens in Congress you are dead wrong. Congressmen use taxpayer dollars to manipulate the Record because there is nothing that says they can't. They insert bogus info, like "Congressman Bob Blowhard addressed the House with a commendation for the 4-H Club of Woohah, Oklahoma". Which never really happened but it makes Senator Blowhard look good with his constituents. They also change the words of what they really said on the floor to make themselves sound better.
Here is a blog post mentioning the problem Stossel brings up and a small excerpt [powerblogs.com]
Carl
Re:Pro-Gress vs Con-Gress (Score:2, Informative)
Progress = Walk forward
Congress = Walk together/with
'-gress' is from the Latin 'gradi' (to walk)/gradus (a step). 'ghredh' comes from the same place, but 'go' obviously makes less sense than 'walk' (which it also means).