Agenda

We will be using the Google Ngram Viewer to test hypotheses about history and culture.

Get ready

Based on what you learn from the video, answer the following questions[*]:

What are ngrams? Why did Google release ngrams instead of the full text of the books?
In what year did “thrived” become more popular than “throve” (at least in texts?)
What is culturomics?
Why was the word “beft” popular in texts before 1800?

Next, think of a hypothesis about history or culture that you can test using the Google NGram Viewer.

Write your answers to the above questions and your hypothesis in a document called NGramPrep in your shared Google drive folder.

[*] These questions are from an assignment created by Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau, used respectfully but without explicit permission