Can we use out of-the-box software to communicate our research findings and represent the fuzzy logic of the humanities?

Cartographers and artists have long made sentimental and subjective maps that portray the emotional states of individuals and communities. The Google N-grams viewer is another successful attempt at making subjective information visible to the broader public. These hijackings of the tools of scientific inquiry for qualitative research remain relatively rare and will not develop further unless they are adopted more broadly by researchers and in humanities classrooms.

This is a pity because there are so many simple tools like Google Fusion Tables and Tableau Public they are fun to play with. They could make for excellent teaching tools, or even make humanities research findings go viral in the way that scientific studies often do. But there is a big problem: visualization tools generally require precise locations and numbers, so we need to come up with new ways of thinking about data for qualitative research.

Which software packages have you used to visualize data in class? Have you come up with innovative ways to present qualitative research? Is there a body of qualitative research that you would like to see as a bar chart, map, or scatterplot?

Bring at least one idea for a subjective or emotional dataset. We will play with some online visualization tools, brainstorm uses for them, and execut a few small projects.

Databases are my friends. Every application that I use and care about has a database built into it somewhere: digital audio workstation, video editor, address book, calendar, to-do list (don’t forget online shopping…). Important research is predicated on the analysis of databases. Increasingly, many of my favorite works of art are driven by databases. I’m inspired by civic hacking projects made possible by the open data movement.

So why is it such a pain to create and work with databases? How come we still reach for a spreadsheet when we know darn well a database would be better? Would the world be a better place if everyone databased? Has the NSA made database a dirty word? What tools do we need to make databasing more like sledding?

Come share your love/hate experiences with databases. Teach us about your favorite tools for making life with databases more fulfilling. Let’s imagine together what will replace databases as we know them.

This session will have elements of teach and play.  Bring your favorite web-based text analysis tool (i.e., virtually, of course) and share what you like, what it does well, and what you wish it did.  I’ll start with Textal.

The more information is collected, the more difficult it becomes to sift it, organize it, and find what you need.

Statistical data analysis (data analytics) is the process of this type of analysis, encompassing natural language processing and more.  This is what comes after gathering “big data”.  Imagine taking the contents of 2 or more online databases, combining them, and then sifting through them for relationships, correspondences, linkages, similarities and differences and more.

Data analysts are increasingly in demand by large research institutes, big business, and government agencies.  How will we fill the same need for humanities scholars?  Where could we find the funding?  How do we make this happen?

I for one am very interested in pursuing this type of career, but would like to do so in support of scholars, so I’m very interested in your thoughts about this.