What we learned from 5 million books

[LegendLength]

I could feel the left wing jab coming, I really could.

[ATOZBTOURMOMMA]

Culturomics is the application of massive scale data collection and analysis to the study of **sedentairy** and/or mainly **western** culture

[ATOZBTOURMOMMA]

@ATOZBTOURMOMMA western or westernized.. whateva :)



[LowestofheDead]

@dashiellv @starburstayla You're right, they were referencing two webcomics, thanks peeps!

"I'm going to try science": thinkgeek [dot] com/tshirts-apparel/xkcd/dacb/­

[TheBigBoss851]

their talking way too fast about something i dont give a fuck about..........goodbye

[Pyjamas22]

That was a great reference to Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy! Too bad no one got it

[Yaarrr]

This talk was awesome! Informative but also very entertaining.

[atheist382]

God never existed.

[codingoutloud]

"Stand back I'm going to try science" is on an xkcd t-shirt

[aqssas]

nice

[ZeOzerGuy]

in german u say

a picture is worth more than thousand words

picture> +1000 Words

[TharsiSera]

06.35 LOL hes rapping.....

[DeathSoulkt]

0:15 Here we go.

[beforeiknew]

This is one of my favourite Ted Talks!

[bolt93]

what the hell is wrong with the guy on the right? he keeps trying to sound lively but his voice keeps breaking. great presentation nontheless.

[MsLichbitch]

Lame



[paulsmallwall]

didn't like the guy in the black shirt till the Hitchhikers guide to the universe ref

[mophosophical]

0:15. Really TED, do we have to keep doing this?

[Flyborg]

Random correction: Although the "stand back I'm going to try science" quote is from XKCD, the image is from an equally awesome comic called "Dresden Codak". And on the image it says "I will do science to it". Very different types of comics, but if you like one you'll probably like the other.

[SmileyWhiplash]

The guy in the black shirt has an extremely annoying manner of speaking. Just saying.

[xMachineGhostsx]

2012 is the new 1950

[Baiyiy]

wow, this is what harvard does? what a waste of time

[sirdeedee]

For Sheldon on the right, you get a like and favourite

[starburstayla]

XKCD shoutout FTW!!!

[fernandatralala]

geez, can't people wait 15 seconds to the beginning of the talking? what a rush! O_O

[LowestofheDead]

That's not xkcd, that's Dresden Codak!

And it's 'I will do science to it!"

[starburstayla]

@LowestofheDead The webcomic XKCD had a comic featuring the line "Stand back, I'm going to try science"

[dashiellv]

@LowestofheDead You are wrong, just search for it. It's on a t-shirt even.

[RidgeRacerLord]

@LowestofheDead Funny thing is they got the quote pretty much right, but they used the completely wrong image.

[steve0281]

The guy on the right is channeling Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory.

[kalaway]

If on a winter's night a traveler.....anyone?

It is a fun talk and sparks my stat bone, but limited practical use I suppose.

[Shalek]

Excellent talk.

[hastalueguito]

ok, so you learnt nothing from all of those books... that's hard to do... you smart ted talkers get worrking on saving the world RIGHT NOW, this is becoming very crazy

[justinhbrown]

TED would reference XKCD

[GuitarSongCoverDude]

Wow, not even a week old and already over 30.000 views. It seems like this is going to be a future one of the most viewed videos as it is quite funny, though its rather mediocre in content (Nontheless better than most TED videos lately).

[Boehoehuahoei]

Agent Smith is the Best speaker ever!!!

ohh, he also teamed up with a German.

Agent Smith and a German everybody!!!

[rexlovestoboogie]

Nerds ..Enough said ..they will probably inherit the earth

[SamyaDaleh]

Omg, have they never heard that "thousand" is a synonyme for "many"? We also speak of a thousand stars and a thousand miles and so on without anyone getting the idea to take it seriously.

[eatcarpet]

Let's party like it's 1950.

[lipilee]

Darth Vader is a researcher?

[VonKraut]

aaaargh

[JDNuvo]

Did you know republican showed up more than democrat over the years in books? LOL. C'est tres interesant n'est ce pas?

[miskee11]

I think this is a bit stupid, but still interesting.

[JDNuvo]

Bonjour Jean-Baptiste, c'est tres amusant. Parlez vous francais? C'est drolle que vous etudiez culture et parlez tres bien en englais. Tres bien! Encore! :)

[LockeNotLoki]

@113Doctor How about checking the phrase 'lights in the sky" or "lights in the air."

[gjsterp]

Try putting 'genesis' and 'evolution' together on nGram.

Good to see evolution winning...

[Silverstarlightt]

This was hilarious. Very enjoyable to watch (:

[tarohoa]

knowledge to the people

[musictaps]

Awesome but not a cross-section of human culture. A cross-section of authors.

[Legit101bro]

Google. Once again breaking copyright laws.

[khaughey66]

I want a t-shirt with Anrrgh on it. (Only the n has gotta be superscripted like it's supposed to be) I simply must have one made!

[McArrowni]

That was an image from Dresden Codak, not XKCD. But fewer people know about that one because it updates like, once a year.

[cnmaster01]

@McArrowni I love DC wish it was more frequent....

[djsnakeyes]

much to do about nothing

[Crazylalalalala]

well this was entertaining, yet useless.

[jjmm112]

Wank

[mazdaplz]

A³RGH scale peaks in 1998!

[TheHickstead]

I was listening to the talk and doing other stuff, and suddenly i noticed that his voice changed!

[omolivera]

Yes! science made fun.

[LokiClock]

#AI - 11:10, concept of censorship & the graph correspond - manipulation of the natural order of exposure.

[AlanKinNA]

The not-so-new yet un-Luddite expression arises:

"There is nothing new under the sun" seem appropriate

[CrestalMyth]

As flawed as the data might be ("YouTube" returned the most results in the 1900s period), this remains endlessly fun.

[Aralith1]

@CrestalMyth Check again. I admit I have no idea what's with the rise in 1899, but in reality it's hardly a bump at all. It only looks that way because of the way the graph is arranged, but the top of the graph doesn't even hit a millionth of a percent. Extend the year parameters out to 2008 and you see it mentioned in way more books after 2000.

[anorangetree]

Jean-Baptiste Michel is french. ^^

[fifimsp]

@anorangetree And rather cute in my opinion.

[2LegHumanist]

utter crap



[phonic0photon]

Half the information on here is a red herring, to the fact the whole presentation is predicated on flawed input.

[pillar7of7fabulosity]

not what i was expecting, but awesome nonetheless.

[kiddhitta]

i couldn't watch the video just because of the way the first guy talked.

[paulo101]

@kiddhitta your loss

[Ou8y2k2]

@kiddhitta Really? I couldn't even understand the frenchy.

[gulllars]

Now this is awesome, as in awe inspiring.

Totally going to try that thing out now.

I wonder if they have suggestions like in normal searches for thing people search a lot about, or statistics over what people query the engine about the most. I bet there are a lot of people amusing themselves looking at historical populatity of fetishes and other wierd stuff.

[calebp9503]

fantastic talk!

[etzel33]

search "free market" ???

[GraphitePen]

3:28 Blatant misrepresentation of facts...

"I will do science to it" is from Dresden Codak, not XKCD!

[DrSpooglemon]

GWO.

The Google World Order...

[royohz]

YOU HAVE TO BREATHE HARDER! YOU'RE NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH!

[simonepemp]

Awesome! Brilliant! Can't stop playing with the Books Ngram Viewer

[HKragh]

@WhyDoYouLive7 And what if it were the tax payers? You don't find this worth some invested money? I think it's very educating. Very much worth my money...

[JennyFarlopez]

Soooo dumbed down and filled with cheesy jokes instead of actual information.

[DrSpooglemon]

@JennyFarlopez Shaarrap!

[MrJimmyDz]

I like them cuz they took a page from xkcd.

[Jackmyster99]

@WhyDoYouLive7 Ummm, no? Google Sponsored them....

[NitroReviews]

Books are for fags

[MobiusCoin]

Mind=blown.

[godshiva]

Glad to know I am not the only one doing statistical analysis on batches of books. I just wish I had as many available as these guys!

[TheCheekyDarkie]

Boring, don't bother!

[beforeiknew]

The guy with glasses reminds me of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory.

[austinguy23]

Another worthless TED lecture.

[ErichoTTA]

Very nicely done.

[IAmKingBonzo]

ADDICTING IS NOT A FUCKING WORD

[mccartycris]

@IAmKingBonzo lol, you definitely got the point of that talk

[DimmedDiamond]

Terrible presentation. Failed stand up comics that discovered a google tool. Summary of video: they looked at some books written between certain periods, and found which words became more frequent, and some less frequent.

[adharma]

Actually, they took a page out of Dresden Codak, not XKCD.

[SynysterGates30]

Why does the bearded guy remind me of the Joker from Batman?

[niriop]

Culturomics: you first heard it here in 2011 ladies and gentlemen! What a fantastic creation!

[rambo19991]

pls dont make this a stand up comedy show ...

[0gods]

Google should rename itself Pablum Inc.

One long infomercial for Google and a massive appeal to authority (Harvard). The key here is what books get dumped in the exclusion process (02:48), which of course Google will control.

[ennot]

remove all the lame jokes and shorten this to about 5 minutes and you'll get a decent introduction kind of talk. As it is, all slick but no substance, although the idea is interesting

[clintonskakun]

As much as I like the TED talks I don't find that I learn anything practical from them.

[egokick]

00:15 start of talk

[Shalek]

@egokick Thank you good sir.

[srgwarcock]

@egokick thankyou... i just wanted to let you know: good luck and we're counting on you

[stephentsang2000]

after watching this, i said: "okay, so what?"

[DavidEdwardSchnell]

Book pornography

[snylekkie]

the guy to the left is a lame talker

[damarh]

19 mathematicians saw this presentation and where not impressed.

[AlderDragon]

@damarh As a mathematician I find this very interesting.

[Yametz]

A study that was made to give google some propaganda.

Smooth move, Google, smooth move.

Nice presentation tough.

[GrahamTVdotNet]

Funny history and Analysis !

[catracho93]

google is taking over.

[dayati]

I thought this talk was going to be about some profound truths they learned from 5 million books. Instead, they charted how many "A"s people used in the word "argh". Great job.

[enalevets]

@dayati I too was hoping for something a little more profound... they could have afforded to be a little bit less the comedians and concentrated on demonstrating the potential of this resource.

[ABitOfTheUniverse]

@dayati Well, September 19th was "International Talk Like A Pirate Day", seemed kind of fitting to me.

[mowriter]

@dayati : the role of censorship in the arts and communication was highly relevant information. Also the evolution of language (Thrived/Throve, Beft/Best). The Beft/Best thing of course was less about language (that was always meant to be an "S") as much as what I believe was standardization of letters, arguably as part of public education?

[linpointer]

the jokes are not fucking funny, they are laughing because they think it is what smart people found humorous, but the side joke material is shit and makes the crowd and presenters smug...

[mosyemessy1988]

YOu had that much amount of data, and this is what you did with it???

I mean cool, but really?

[mischine]

I think they were kind of CUT? They were like rushed at the end?!

[ilotitto]

and this is how you save the world. Bring knowledge to people, not to companies

[Foreverthenerd]

I freaking love math!

[plalelal]

See they are now using txting shorthand. Shorter quicker!

[asdfgoogle]

ME "Hey TED, why is your intro so quiet?"

TED "oh okay, I'll turn it up"

ME "oh wait, nevermind... I had my volume at a lower setting"

TED "too late now... you get what you asked for, chump!"

[razorvard]

So how does 2012 fit in this chart?????????????

[TheSpankymonkey]

If i wanted to understand about a planet and there was existing biolgical organisms i would set them to work telling me everything there is to know rather than do the work myself. And here we have it, everything you need to know about earth, it's inhabitants, cultures and memes all in digital format. Thanks planet earth.

[CurtHowland]

Copyright must be abolished.

[BassAceReturns]

So... Trevor Moore is a statistician now...

Seriously though, awesome talk.

[ScoreStudy]

Fuck you, TED, for your obnoxious insensitivity to the thousands of requests for a shorter intro, with lower volume! Fuck you!

[poarak]

Lightly shaky talkers, but a very important talk.

[NetSelect]

Brilliant talk!

[gaiagale]

at best the learning is second hand and or virtual ...for every minute spent reading they are minutes taken away from real life experience

that aside ...the presentation is humourous in a 'tongue in cheek' sort of way

thanks for sharing

[gigantibyte]

"Flying cars" was most mentioned in the early 1800s? Am I reading NGram Viewer correctly?

[benumc]

@gigantibyte Haha, your question got me wondering so upon closer inspection, it would seem that a flying car may in fact refer to a flying carriage.

The flying car that is so frequently mentioned seems to appear in a poem from the late 1700s that was printed in several different books.

[License2KiIl]

will brockman is a BITCH

[Dixavd]

That was not only enjoyable but also interesting.

Especially the graph on Marc Chagall; I have to do a presentation and work on censorship in Nazi Germany. Explaining what they did is easy, but showing sources is much more difficult (since a lot of them were censored haha) but this is such a fantastic graph to show it. What coincidental luck.

[solojam]

bunch of geeks

[D5932]

google's been trying to digitalize everything, making all the process much more efficient, faster, smarter. the way i see it their ultimate search system can be perfect with a machine that can understand what human really wants/needs by talking/observing.

[Levikarose79]

11 people are illiterate.

[D5932]

will there come a time when you can just post a comment and not engage in a fucking hour long debate? i think yes... or not

[a11m0n]

With a good text book and teachers like these guys I might have been able to get through statistics.

[moneycrab]

This talk was high on the awesome axis

[vdubs4life1964]

good stuff!

[system3142]

Far out...

[soshimyk]

Just an accreditation note: the comic panel used in the presentation was not from XKCD. It was taken from a web-comic called Dresden Codak ( the comic used was from May 2nd, 2008).

[DirectInjected]

aaaaaaaargh!

[chessdude67]

Excellent!

Thumbs Way up!

[SailfishSoundSystem]

I typed (war, peace) into it. Pretty interesting. There was way more talk always about war. And you can see World War 1 and World War 2 spike like crazy. The U.S. Civil War spiked, but not as much.

[DoJaenin]

Nice talk, but the first 4:30 minutes you might as well skip...

[gamzer]

Wow the crowd is way too enthusiastic! Great talk though

[TheChanclasVerdes]

In wireless communication, a picture is actualy worth a thousand words, in terms of data capacity of a radiowave. :P

[gavinplaysbass]

Search "fuck". There are MASSIVE spikes around the 1700's for some reason

[dragonvegeta]

Aaaargh!

The loud intro music :P

[ihavegreenapples]

"Awesome yet practical" I wonder if this is a TVTropes quote or just a coincidence.

[AndrewDBarker]

It'd be interesting to apply the Suppression Index to things that the news media (Fox News, MSNBC, CBS .. etc) talks about, and to see if it's viewed as a Suppression or a Propaganda hit.

[Duke1839]

@AndrewDBarker Such analysis has already been done, there are several books on media bias that cite how often certain words or phrases appear in or are mentioned in news publications. Try finding the words "very liberal" in the New York Times. Much less than the phrase "very conservative".

[AndrewDBarker]

@Duke1839 Really? Fascinating. I'd love to get a hold of some of those books.. Got any recommendations?

[Duke1839]

@AndrewDBarker Left Turn by Tim Groseclose or Slander by Ann Coulter

[DeoMachina]

@Duke1839 Did you seriously just recommend Coulter? That's almost as bad as Glenn Beck

[Duke1839]

@DeoMachina Slander is a great book, I haven't read anything by Glen Beck and I'm sure you haven't read anything by either author so be quiet.

[DeoMachina]

As soon as I saw that guy I thought "oh no, this guy probably likes XKCD". THEN HE HAD TO GO AND REFERENCE IT

I GOT SO MAD

[juliobell]

to be or not to be flu, That's the question?

[beyondblues]

the way he's speaking/breathing reminded me of the joker for a second...

[brazilianirishcomedy]

loving the ngram was on it for an hour before i noticed how much time went past

[phoenixkittybear]

Awesome! :)

[richardmann184]

stupid shit