Fun With Google’s Ngram Viewer

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


When I first heard about Google’s new Ngram viewer, I thought: Good God, when did the Scientologists get a hold of the search-engine monopoly? What’s next, online e-meters?!

Fortunately, our inestimable blogging machine, Kevin Drum, set me straight. Google’s new gadget—named for a generic measure of character-string length—gauges the popularity of selected terms over time, based on their frequency in the 5.2 million-strong book collection on Google Books. And Kevin promptly put it to good use, proving how “data is” has grown acceptable as an alternative to “data are.” (I’m with you, K., though I’ll probably have my American Copy Editors Society card yanked for admitting it.)

Kevin’s also got the right idea, treating this thing as it should be treated: a fun toy. I’m sure some journalists and academics will flock to it as a source for trend stories and testable hypotheses, and that’s just fine. But it’s of limited scientific utility just now. That, of course, will change as the cloud finds new ways to mash up the Google Labs technology. Until then, here’s a comparison of the frequency with which we’ve referred to “global thermonuclear war” and “red fire engine” since 1920:

It’s red fire engines by a mile.

And if you’ve always wondered who’s been written about more since 1998—academic postmodernists, or Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden—here’s your answer:

Don’t look now, Saddam: Foucault and Derrida just drank your milkshake.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate