Hi The google database does not lend itself to item selection in the way described by Annette as do numerous other smaller datasets. I think it is perhaps primarily useful for seeing the historical use over time of different terms. Entering "repressed memory, recovered memory, false memory", for example, reveals interesting pattern across time for the increase and then decrease of these terms, with false memory persisting somewhat longer. And others have mentioned names, like Freud.
Given sets of words for some experiment, then it would be possible to show, for example, that one set tends to occur more frequently than another, although even here numerical values are not produced (scores are relative to total number of words in database). It is possible to download the entire database, which would give more flexibility, but the files are huge and it would be necessary to "manage" the database in some way. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca >>> Annette Taylor <tay...@sandiego.edu> 20-Dec-10 11:06 AM >>> Although this is interesting, I think that I would be more interested in having them provide a search box in which I can fill out criteria, as some other websites do, such as 2-syllable nouns and ask them to list the 100 most and least frequent. I don't see a way to do this; do any of you see a way to do it? Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 tay...@sandiego.edu<mailto:tay...@sandiego.edu> ________________________________ From: Mike Palij [m...@nyu.edu] Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 4:41 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Subject: [tips] The Mother Of All Word Frequency Databases Google, which has been digitalizing the book collections of the world, has created a database that allows one to examine the frequency with which words appear as well as their frequency overtime. There is a NY Times article on this (which misidentifies Steven Pinker as a "linguist"; people in the humanities seem perplexed about whether such a database would be of any use to them); see: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/books/17words.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a26&pagewanted=all There is an article in Science by the people who worked on the database that can be viewed here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/15/science.1199644 The Google database can be accessed here: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/ And data from the database can be downloaded; instructions on how to do this can be found here: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/datasets -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: tay...@sandiego.edu. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a21b0&n=T&l=tips&o=7272 or send a blank email to leave-7272-13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a2...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a891720c9&n=T&l=tips&o=7376 or send a blank email to leave-7376-13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a89172...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7377 or send a blank email to leave-7377-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
