I initially ran the topic model based on 100 topics\nneglecting to incorporate that we were only dealing with approximately\none-third of the content of these complete records. At that point, I had not calculated\nthe total number of documents (or lines) we would be analyzing if access was\nreadily available to the whole corpus; I assumed it would be large nonetheless.\nOne hundred topics did not provide any clear distinction that was insightful. I\nthen reduced that number by half with still about the same results. I reduced\nthe topic number again in half (so 25% of the first number of topics). I then\nreduced the number down in increments of 5 reaching 20 and then 15. Twenty\nseems to display enough distinction although again, all topics have a land association.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Topic 11 \u201cNew Orleans riverbank title\u201d stood out the most to\nme because I personally recognize the \u201cbatture\u201d as a unique location I\u2019ve been\nto and also alluvion as a soil type. Although I connected with this topic\ndescription, it does not relate to the Midwest and the Northwest Territory my\nteammate and I are focused on. For that, Topic 2 relating to authority in\ntreaties and grants will more likely address our topic. Topic 9 which appears\nto deal with heirs to claims will be more relevant, although there is no\ngeographic connection to intersect with the Midwest yet at this point. For the\nprimary source material we are dealing with, the topic model with twenty topics\nselected encapsulates a broad overview of land related subjects, of which the\nMidwest is our focus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, the topic model does not necessarily add any\nnew information or insight to our research. I think I would feel differently\nabout this topic modeling being useful as guidance if we had been able to\nutilize it much earlier in our research. It could likely have served one of its\nintended purposes as an informative gateway to texts for people unfamiliar with\nthe topics contained in the American State Papers. Because of the technical\ndifficulties with access we have encountered, we have become more intimate with\nsome individual documents and themes while being limited in access to others. An\nearly, broad, generalized peek at the overall themes contained within our\nprimary source documents would have offered insight and possibly enhanced our\nproductivity by providing a more effective introduction to the subject matter.\nThat route may have resulted in better overall time management because of\nacquiring some familiarity at an earlier implementation stage of our project. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I initially ran the topic model based on 100 topics neglecting to incorporate that we were only dealing with approximately one-third of the content of these complete records. At that point, I had not calculated the total number of documents (or lines) we would be analyzing if access was readily available to the whole corpus; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asandersgarcia.humspace.ucla.edu\/courses\/earlyamhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asandersgarcia.humspace.ucla.edu\/courses\/earlyamhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asandersgarcia.humspace.ucla.edu\/courses\/earlyamhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asandersgarcia.humspace.ucla.edu\/courses\/earlyamhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asandersgarcia.humspace.ucla.edu\/courses\/earlyamhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asandersgarcia.humspace.ucla.edu\/courses\/earlyamhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130,"href":"https:\/\/asandersgarcia.humspace.ucla.edu\/courses\/earlyamhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asandersgarcia.humspace.ucla.edu\/courses\/earlyamhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asandersgarcia.humspace.ucla.edu\/courses\/earlyamhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asandersgarcia.humspace.ucla.edu\/courses\/earlyamhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}