Alyssa Virker, with the Data Sitters Club, shares a very practical, no-frills post about topic modeling as part of its TL;DR series, which is aimed at people who “don’t know if digital humanities is right for you.” This post is ideal for introducing students to the method as a form of inquiry and exploration, in under 1,500 words. Rather than giving a step-by-step for conducting a topic model, this post explains what this particular mode of inquiry does and does not do, and that “topic modeling is a mere mortal swimming in ambiguity with the rest of us.”
The post includes links to to more dense theoretical frameworks and step-by-step guidance.
dh+lib Review
This post was produced through a cooperation between Kayla Abner, Amy Gay, and Claire Burns (Editors-at-Large), Hillary Richardson and Molly McGuire (Editors for the week), Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara, Caitlin Christian-Lamb, Ruth Carpenter, Pamella Lach, Christine Salek, and Rachel Starry (dh+lib Review Editors), and Tom Lee (Technical Editor).