scholarly journals Could Fiction Have an Information History? Statistical Probability and the Rise of the Novel

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dallas Liddle
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Statistical Probability ◽  
Information History

scholarly journals Could Fiction Have an Information History? Statistical Probability and the Rise of the Novel

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dallas Liddle
Keyword(s):  
Data Mining ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Information Age ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Distant Reading ◽  
Statistical Probability ◽  
Reading Methods ◽  
Information History

Literary scholars in the information age, whatever issues we may differ on, have long shared a belief that the amount of "information" in literary language is not a phenomenon that can be empirically investigated. We tell our students, and remind each other, that the meaning in literary texts is inherently subjective, culture-specific, and contextual rather than fixed. Scholar Katherine Bode reaffirms this article of faith in a new book on digital literary methodology, writing that "literary data are inevitably constructed and transactional, whether they are explicitly designated so or not." Long prose forms such as the novel seem especially immune to empirical assessment. As Thomas Pavel notes, the wide-open form of the novel allows "for any imaginable kind of confabulation without constraint," while the fact that each reader can reinterpret and recontextualize a novel anew seems to guarantee that the meanings latent in such texts can never be fully described, much less quantified. Probably because both digital and traditional humanists hold these beliefs, most data mining, topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and other distant reading methods used on fiction search for subtle patterns or relative thematic trends across time, or for faint signals of style detectable in genres or the works of individual writers. We assume that the total quantity of information contained in novels could never be computationally estimated by any measure humanists would care about.

Novel Algorithmic Approach to Deciphering Rovash Inscriptions

2015 ◽  
pp. 7222-7233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loránd Lehel Tóth ◽  
Raymond Pardede ◽  
Gábor Hosszú
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Results ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Statistical Probability ◽  
Algorithmic Approach ◽  
Topological Parameters ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Novel Algorithm

The article presents a method to decipher Rovash inscriptions made by the Szekelys in the 15th-18th centuries. The difficulty of the deciphering work is that a large portion of the Rovash inscriptions contains incomplete words, calligraphic glyphs or grapheme errors. Based on the topological parameters of the undeciphered symbols registered in the database, the presented novel algorithm estimates the meaning of the inscriptions by the matching accuracies of the recognized graphemes and gives a statistical probability for deciphering. The developed algorithm was implemented in software, which also contains a built-in dictionary. Based on the dictionary, the novel method takes into account the context in identifying the meaning of the inscription. The proposed algorithm offers one or more words in a different random values as a result, from which users can select the relevant one. The article also presents experimental results, which demonstrate the efficiency of method.

The novel steroidal glycoside from the dried bulb of Allium Macrostemon Bunge inhibits platelet activation

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (8) ◽  
pp. S33-S33
Author(s):  
Wenchao Ou ◽  
Haifeng Chen ◽  
Yun Zhong ◽  
Benrong Liu ◽  
Keji Chen
Keyword(s):  
Platelet Activation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Steroidal Glycoside ◽  
Allium Macrostemon

Journalism and the Novel

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doug Underwood
Keyword(s):  
The Novel

Victorian Renovations of the Novel

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Keen
Keyword(s):  
The Novel

The Involuntary Capture of Attention by Sound

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrice B. R. Parmentier ◽  
Pilar Andrés
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Mismatch Negativity ◽  
Visual Task ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Auditory Oddball ◽  
Current Trial ◽  
Electrophysiological Responses ◽  
Electrophysiological Studies ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Task Sets

The presentation of auditory oddball stimuli (novels) among otherwise repeated sounds (standards) triggers a well-identified chain of electrophysiological responses: The detection of acoustic change (mismatch negativity), the involuntary orientation of attention to (P3a) and its reorientation from the novel. Behaviorally, novels reduce performance in an unrelated visual task (novelty distraction). Past studies of the cross-modal capture of attention by acoustic novelty have typically discarded from their analysis the data from the standard trials immediately following a novel, despite some evidence in mono-modal oddball tasks of distraction extending beyond the presentation of deviants/novels (postnovelty distraction). The present study measured novelty and postnovelty distraction and examined the hypothesis that both types of distraction may be underpinned by common frontally-related processes by comparing young and older adults. Our data establish that novels delayed responses not only on the current trial and but also on the subsequent standard trial. Both of these effects increased with age. We argue that both types of distraction relate to the reconfiguration of task-sets and discuss this contention in relation to recent electrophysiological studies.

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