We’re happy to announce that Scholarly Commons intern Matt Pitchford is teaching a series of two Savvy Researcher Workshops on Topic Modeling. You may be following Matt’s posts on Studying Rhetorical Responses to Terrorism on Twitter or Preparing Your Data for Topic Modeling on Commons Knowledge, and now is your chance to learn the basics from the master! The workshops will be held on Wednesday, December 6th and Friday, December 8th. See below for more details!
Topic Modeling, Part 1: Theory
- Wednesday, December 6th, 11am-12pm
- 314 Main Library
- Topic models are a computational method of identifying and grouping interrelated words in any set of texts. In this workshop we will focus on how topic models work, what kinds of academic questions topic models can help answer, what they allow researchers to see, and what they can obfuscate. This will be a conversation about topic models as a tool and method for digital humanities research. In part 2, we will actually construct some topic models using MALLET.
- To sign up for the class, see the Savvy Researcher calendar
Topic Modeling, Part 2: Practice
- Friday, December 8th, 11am-12pm
- 314 Main Library
- In this workshop, we will use MALLET, a java based package, to construct and analyze a topic model. Topic models are a computational method of identifying and grouping interrelated words in any set of text. This workshop will focus on how to correctly set up the code, understand the output of the model, and how to refine the code for best results. No experience necessary. You do not need to have attended Part I in order to attend this workshop.
- To sign up for this class, see the Savvy Researcher calendar