Week 02

From Text to Matrices: Representing Text as Data

Topics

• How to represent text as data?
• What is a Bag of Words?
• What are tokens?
• Why should we care about tokens?

Readings

Required Readings

• Grimmer, Justin, Margaret E. Roberts, and Brandon M. Stewart. Text as data: A new framework for machine learning and the social sciences. Princeton University Press, 2022 - Chapters 3-5

• Applied Papers:

• Denny, M. J., & Spirling, A. (2018). Text preprocessing for unsupervised learning: why it matters, when it misleads, and what to do about it. Political Analysis, 26(2): 168-189.

• Ban, Pamela, Alexander Fouirnaies, Andrew B. Hall, and James M. Snyder. “How newspapers reveal political power.” Political Science Research and Methods 7, no. 4 (2019): 661-678.

• Michel, J.B., et al. 2011. “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books.” Science 331 (6014): 176–82. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199644

Coding Materials

• Week 2 - Text Data Processing

Slides

• Week 2 - From Text to Matrices: Representing Text as Data