presidential word clouds 2010
March 18th, 2010
Methodology is the same as the VP Internal word clouds, with no words deleted but with folding some words into one.
The input text was copy-pasted from their websites on March 18. If someone knows where to find Debogorski’s platform, please let me know as I was unsuccessful. The total words including even common stop words is Bailey: 1159; Saulnier: 3971. A word of caution – Bailey offers about 70% less text content than Saulnier, and word clouds are better with MORE text, so there may be impaired accuracy.
Neil Bailey
Chris Saulnier
As usual, some thoughts on these word clouds only unless otherwise specified.
- The obvious: Bailey’s cloud is dominated by “sustainability” and “community“. It is also a major word for Saulnier, though in a more balanced fashion.
- Saulnier was the only candidate to have both Sexton and Carleton appear in his word cloud, though he spelled Carleton incorrectly. IDE seen that before but couldn’t remember where.
- Bailey’s name appears twice in his word cloud as both Neil’s and Neil, which would indicate his platform is at least partially written in third person, which is unusual. A reincarnation of Bob Dole, perhaps?
- I was amused to see website make an appearance consistently, unlike the VP Internal clouds.
- The president is the Chief Executive Officer of the Union. Can you tell that from the word clouds? Saulnier has words related to that concept: “executive”, “leadership”, “staff”, “council”, and possibly “meetings”, “office” (though those are boring). Bailey had fewer – perhaps “policy” and “vision”, arguably “community”.
- I was surprised to see vague words in Bailey’s word cloud: “many”, “much”. I teach classes on how to write precisely and be specific, and these words will earn you big red marks on your paper.
- Looking at the action words,
- Bailey: need, change, make, develop. Together with words like “issue” and “problem”, this indicates a high level of dissatisfaction with the DSU and a desire to implement change.
- Saulnier: “new”, “create” indicate innovation, tempered by the word “ensure” which tends to indicate the continuation or execution of an existing idea, though “better” could indicate the desire to improve on the status quo. ”work” and “provide” are also present.
- I like the presence of “goal” in Saulnier’s word cloud, but was surprised by “order“. It turns out that is due to his inordinate love of the phrase “in order to”.
- I was puzzled to see “decline” and “growth” both in Bailey’s word cloud, with roughly the same weight.
Any other observations? Weigh in below.
IDE never let him live that one down either.
This appears to be a growing issue for students. The perverts are becoming more courageous because the police are unable to find these idiots.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2010/03/18/ns-south-street-assault.html
… what?
@Gregory Debogorski
I’m willing to bet that these attacks are no more frequent than they’ve been in the past. It’s just that the University actively distributes information about them now instead of trying to cover it up so students feel safe.
Neil certainly uses the word ‘sustainability’ a good handful of times, however, it is one of the few examples where it is not green washing.
I also find the word clouds inaccurate. On the website the term ‘sustainability’ is used 6 times, however, the word ‘community’ is used 9 times. Yet, in the word cloud ‘community’ is substantially smaller than ‘sustainability’.
All in all, these word clouds seem arbitrary. Somehow using a word twice, such as Neil using ‘ignorance’, warrants being included in the word cloud.
@Bernie
I think you missed the part where Mike merged different forms of the same word.
I count 13 uses of “sustainable”, “sustainability”, and “unsustainable” on Neil’s issue page. 14 if you add the image link.
@Bernie
Thanks for pointing out the strangeness in the counts, particular “ignorance”. I found that I had accidentally pasted one of the pages twice. This lowers the word count substantially, and makes some smaller changes to the word cloud (in particular, sustainability is less dominant, and a few words have disappeared). I have changed my commentary appropriately.
“Counting is hard” is absolutely write about me merging words, however; sustainability/sustainable are merged together and why it is still the single most prevalent word/concept.
I will say “arbitrary” is a bizarre characterization of something produced by a software tool. It’s only as good as its input, and certainly word placement is non-deterministic, but I can assure you it is not arbitrary.
@John Doucette
You are likely right. The media attention of these attacks might be caused by an increase in frequency though. Thereby making it more difficult for “the cover-up”.
I wonder which is more accurate.
I further wonder how many unreported incidents occur.
This is one issue the DSU took a stance on at the beginning of the year. Security stopped issuing bulletins on the “night watcher” as they felt it was being redundant. So we meet with Dal security and the lead detective on the case to find out other ways to remind students to lock their doors at night. Oh “LOCK YOUR DOORS AT NIGHT.”
Also if anyone knows of any incidents that were not notified, please let the DSU know. A month ago an attack near Sexton was not reported by Security as they did not know about it. So a councilor of the DSU reported it to Shannon and me. The next day an official report came out once the Security verified it with the Halifax Regional Police.