Week 12 “Data Mining and Text Mining”

Data Mining has made my college years so much easier. When I read the following passage I admit that had been nightmare from a young age, “Borges’s nightmare, of course, is a cursed vision of the research methods of disciplines such as literature, history, and philosophy, where the careful reading of books, one after the other, is supposed to lead inexorably to knowledge and understanding.” When doing research in middle school and high school I was always overwhelmed by the sheer amount of literature that there was available to. I always thought there’s no way I can comb through all of these books and article, what if I’m missing a critical or important piece of information. As I got older and as technology advanced, my prayers were answered.

While it is not a perfect science Data mining and Text mining have greatly increased the ease and accuracy of research in social science fields. Programs are able to scan for more pages than the human eye for phrases and information. Using these programs I’ve found have increased that quality of my work in college. Instead of being bogged down with multiple books and wondering which source would have the best data, I am able to scan through 10 times as many articles and books to find 10 times more quality information. While these programs are not yet perfect that have increased the ease of doing research especially in the social science fields. I think they are making history more attainable and readable to a variety of people.

 

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