What Happens When Data Scientists Crunch Through Three Centuries of Robinson Crusoe?

Sep 6, 2018

Grant Glass, a Ph.D. student in English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his Data+ team used computer algorithms and machine learning techniques to sift through 1,482 full-text versions of Robinson Crusoe to see how it’s changed over the years. 

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Grant Glass

Grant Glass

Graduate Students

Faculty Lead, Invisible Adaptations and Project Manager, Pirating Texts

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Pirating Texts

Pirating Texts

Computational Humanities, Data+

2018

In tracing the publication history, geographical spread, and content of “pirated” copies of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Gabriel Guedes (Math, Global Cultural Studies), Lucian Li (Computer Science, History), and Orgil Batzaya (Math, Computer Science) explored the complications of looking at a data set that saw drastic changes over the last three centuries in terms of spelling and grammar, which...