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."
Or Maybe Not.. (Score:5, Funny)
Not according to my in-depth research. Looks like "automated topic analysis" isn't arriving at all.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22automated
Re:Or Maybe Not.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Once google indexes this page and the linked articles page, and every copycat page.
Re:Or Maybe Not.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or Maybe Not.. (Score:2)
Or maybe... (Score:1)
Re:Or maybe... (Score:1)
Re:Or Maybe Not.. (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=of f&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=%22autom atic+topic+analysis%22&spell=1 [google.com]
Re:Or Maybe Not.. (Score:2)
It is interesting that there are already 166 results only a few days after you posted. Now maybe it really has arrived!
Pro-Gress vs Con-Gress (Score:4, Insightful)
Just playing around with some silly words... do we need to analyse what Congressmen speak, to understand their intent or motivations? Following the money would be a better option.. and we'll find a Very High Attention Span for words like money, dollars and Big Bucks..
Re:Pro-Gress vs Con-Gress (Score:5, Interesting)
Correlate the two and you'd really have something.
No, not that. What I meant was who outside of Congress is trying to push buttons, and who inside Congress is helping them. Also, you'd be able to watch for what you may consider important topics to see how they are dealt with.
Re:Pro-Gress vs Con-Gress (Score:2)
Action (or inaction) in congressional committees, hidden from public view = output
Votes on the record = optional output, only if hidden action can't accomplish desired result
Speech on the record = optional side-effect of input, with (I would bet) only moderate correlation
Re:Pro-Gress vs Con-Gress (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pro-Gress vs Con-Gress (Score:4, Interesting)
Just 'cause I was mildly interested (I've heard that wordplay before), I read the dictionary's entries for progress [reference.com], congress [reference.com] and con [reference.com].
And it appears con (when used in pros/cons of a decision) is different to con/com (the prefix).
The gress suffix is from indo-european ghredh (to go) and pro & con have root meanings of advance/forward & to meet respectively.
Progress = Forward Go.
Congress = Meet Go.
Re:Pro-Gress vs Con-Gress (Score:1, Insightful)
To Go Forward
To Go Meet
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).
Re:Pro-Gress vs Con-Gress (Score:2)
Re:Pro-Gress vs Con-Gress (Score:1)
Re:Pro-Gress vs Con-Gress (Score:1)
I'm not sure this is the best metric... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of talk, chit-chat, chatter, etc...
"Okay, now who would want to oppose the True American, Patriot, Love, Peace Act*"
Cricket! Cricket!
*And of course this Act happens to have about thirty-thousand ridders attached to it...
Re:I'm not sure this is the best metric... (Score:4, Funny)
Opposite Side (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Opposite Side (Score:2, Insightful)
INSOLENCE!!! (Score:1, Funny)
Isn't that like "Big Brother"'ing your goverment?
I hate citizens with double morals. Leave those fine representatives alone and let them represent!
Re:INSOLENCE!!! (Score:1)
It's obvious, Congress is NOT competitive --- they are far overpaid, not to be trusted, poor workers (excepting of course, Senators Menendez (D-NJ), Feingold (D-WI), Byrd (D-WV), and some of the reps. We must offshore their jobs to China!!!
Re:INSOLENCE!!! (Score:2)
Dupe? Double Dupe? (Score:1, Offtopic)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/02/22122 7 [slashdot.org] ( http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060802-7408
from the current one:
While text mining 330,000 New York Times articles poses an interesting challenge, it's not as interesting as sifting through 70 million words (from over 70,000 unique documents) found in the Congressional Record. A team of political science researchers has done just that (PDF), and found that their software was able to answer questions
Re:Dupe? Double Dupe? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Dupe? Double Dupe? (Score:1)
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:TheyWorkForYou.com (Score:3, Informative)
Tracking the Congressional Attention Span (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tracking the Congressional Attention Span (Score:2, Funny)
Spend the first forty years of your life a drunken, aimless slob with no business acumen and bad manners, become president.
I think I'm beginning to see some cracks in the stout facade of democracy here....
Re:Tracking the Congressional Attention Span (Score:2)
One of the biggest problems with America, anyone can become president.
Or as Adlai Stevenson put it: "In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks you take."
Re:Tracking the Congressional Attention Span (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Tracking the Congressional Attention Span (Score:2)
sophistication, ha? (Score:2, Funny)
May be the submitter forgot to cite a little bit more impressive examples?
Re:sophistication, ha? (Score:2, Informative)
They're asking the wrong question (Score:5, Funny)
Great. Now we know what congress has been talking about.
Big deal.
Wake me up when you can tell me what in the hell they were thinking.
--MarkusQ
P.S. Other than how to make sure that they--and Joe Lieberman--get re-elected I mean.
Re:They're asking the wrong question (Score:2)
Big deal.
Wake me up when you can tell me what in the hell they were thinking.
Nah, that won't ever work. You'd need to add in support to track lobbiest and funds spent towards each individual congress person. You need to also compare if they actually voted along the lines of what they presented. This sounds like its just doing something like a word count. Big whoop. You can have 2 or more sides pushing competing bills that have similiar but important di
Process Process Process (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Process Process Process (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Process Process Process (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Process Process Process (Score:2)
Ob. Life of Brian: (Score:2)
FRANCIS: Yeah. Thank you, Reg. Well, quite frankly, siblings, I think five years is optimistic, unless we can smash the Roman empire within the next twelve months.
REG: Twelve months?
FRANCIS: Yeah, twelve months. And, let's face it. As empires go, this is the big one, so we've got to get up off our arses and stop just talking about it!
COMMANDOS: Hear! Hear!
LORETTA: I agre
Reading the Record???? (Score:5, Insightful)
This program may count time on paper but can not count time that congress is actually spending.
Congressional Record *IS* false (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe USA needs Hansard (Score:2)
http://www.commonwealth-hansard.org/chea_index.asp [commonwealth-hansard.org]
The other option would be for a group to privately transcribe all or part of the actual proceedings and see what happens:
http://www.commonwealth-hansard.org/chea_story.asp [commonwealth-hansard.org]
Xix.
Garbage in, Garbage Out. (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/20
The Truth (Score:2)
legislative priorities (Score:2)
Re:legislative priorities (Score:2)
Why? Remember, this is congress we're talking about. The "after" discussion would provide redundant results.
Re:legislative priorities (Score:2)
Re:The Truth (Score:1)
2. Jessica Alba
3. Angelina Jolie
4. Pay increases for Congress
5. Junkets
s/Congress/Managers/ and I'm pretty sure that's the agenda from the last IT leadership meeting my superiors held...
The CR is anything but accurate (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Corrupting the judiciary is a strong focus now. (Score:2)
In the U.S., there has recently been a strong focus on appointing judges who will help the rich get richer.
-
Operation Iraqi Liberation, OIL [wikipedia.org], has liberated Iraqi resources, not its people.
Re:Corrupting the judiciary is a strong focus now. (Score:2, Insightful)
Cost? (Score:1, Insightful)
Then everyone can get a warm fuzzy feeling about their tax dollars.
Re:Cost? (Score:1)
They ought to put that in the background - sort of like a taxicab meter. Use some sort of basic formula, congressional salary of those present x time etc...
In a former job we were all billed at a fixed hourly rate. There was a computer in the corner of the conference room, so I wrote a little program... Whenever a meeting started, I'd run it and input the number of people there. It showed a running cost of the meeting. That is, of course, until I ran afoul of one management type that didn't see the
Congress Zeitgeist (Score:3, Interesting)
So in web2.0 terms, this is Google Zeitgeist meets the Statistically Improbable Phrase analysis like you see on Amazon. Find pairs or sets of words which are out of the statistical norm for English, then start to track their rise and fall among the "marketplace of ideas" in Congress. Also, on the c|net news site, they have two graph views to visualize connections between similar-topic stories or often-viewed "hot" stories.
It would be interesting to see how many phrases are just a matter of the odd language that Congress uses. There's a stock metaphorical phrase for just about anything, and there are also a lot of phrases that are steeped in tradition which often get misunderstood by layfolk.
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:Congressional Record vs. what's actually said.. (Score:1)
The researchers stated in the paper that the Congressional Record is "subsetted into three major components, one for the Senate and two for the House of Representatives (one of
Put it to use! (Score:2)
Quick! (Score:1)
Journal Scraping (Score:2)
Well, someone figured out how to scrape the PDF journals they regularly post on their web sit. Very interesting to say the least.
See also: Clustering senators by votes & topic (Score:5, Interesting)
It uses not only word data (from the text of 16 years worth of bills voted on in the U.S. Senate), but also the senator's voting records.
For example, you can see that Sen. Chafee (R-RI) (who was mentioned on this morning's NPR as a "liberal Republican") actually does fall into a cluster of Democrats, not fellow Republicans. When automatically discovering topics using word data alone (without the votes, as does the wustl.edu paper above) the topics on this Senate data are reasonably coherent, but the topics created by this "Group-Topic" new model are even more interesting because their discovery is driven by the need to predict the votes as well as the words. For example, "Social Security" doesn't appear in the old model, but pops out clearly in the new model because it has such a distinct voting pattern.
Some of the other results are also pretty interesting---on Education and Domestic policy the Republicans are more split than the Democrats (forming 3 groups, to the Democrats 1 group). On other topics, the split is the other way around.
Using the same technique, there is also an analysis of 60 years worth of voting records from the U.N. On the topic of "human rights", Nicaragua, Papua, Rwanda, Swaziland and Fiji all get clustered together---ouch!
Re:See also: Clustering senators by votes & to (Score:1)
congress members (Score:2)
This would of course be subject to certain modifiers.
- Time to next election
- money from interested lobbyists
- need to oppose the issues raised by competitors to keep their succes rate down.
I'm sure if you could accuratelly calculate the above modifiers and apply them to any subject spoken about in congress you'd get an accurate prediction.
Tracking the Congressional Attention Span ? (Score:1)
'judicial nominations' (Score:1)
My interpretation: "inter-party power struggles" have consumed steadily more attention...
Or the flip-side: "actually running the damn country" has consumed steadily less attention...
Libertarians, rejoice. Though I feel sick.
Judicial Nominations (Score:2)
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
In Soviet Husi (Score:2)
Most CongressPersons (Score:1)
They can't do shit unless they get elected first, and to get elected they have to sell out, so their priotities change with the system that owns them.
Does it track... (Score:2, Funny)