Category: Modeling

Modeling is the activity of creating an abstract representation of a complex phenomenon, usually in a machine-readable way, possibly in an interactive way (i.e. it includes “simulation”). Models become machine-readable when modelling produces a schema that describes the elements and the structure of an object of inquiry in an explicit way. Modeling can also refer to the activity of transforming or manipulating a digital object in such a way as to make it compatible with a previously constructed model or schema. Mapping, for instance, is an example of a spatial model. Workflow design is included as part of Modeling, using an object such as Process.

Topic Modeling mit dem DARIAH Topics Explorer | forTEXT

Topic Modeling mit dem DARIAH Topics Explorer | forTEXT

Introduction: The first steps into working with digital methods of text analysis are often made with beginner-friendly tools. The DARIAH-DE TopicsExplorer opens up the world of topic modeling with an easy-to-understand GUI, numerous operating options and high-quality results. The team of forText of the University of Hamburg developed a tutorial (Lerneinheit) to guide users step by step from installing the software to the first results with a sample corpus. The tutorial also contains screenshots, videos, exercises and explanations. This follows the didactic concept of forText.

Read More
Do humanists need BERT?

Do humanists need BERT?

Introduction: Ted Underwood tests a new language representation model called “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers” (BERT) and asks if humanists should use it. Due to its high degree of difficulty and its limited success (e.g. in questions of genre detection) he concludes, that this approach will be important in the future but it’s nothing to deal with for humanists at the moment. An important caveat worth reading.

Read More
Standardization Survival Kit – Create a dictionary in TEI

Standardization Survival Kit – Create a dictionary in TEI

Introduction: Standards are best explained in real life use cases. The Parthenos Standardization Survival Kit is a collection of research use case scenarios illustrating best practices in Digital Humanities and Heritage research. It is designed to support researchers in selecting and using the appropriate standards for their particular disciplines and workflows. The latest addition to the SSK is a scenario for creating a born-digital dictionary in TEI.

Read More

Towards Semantic Enrichment of Newspapers: A Historical Ecology Use Case

Introduction: Ecologists are much aided by historical sources of information on human-animal interaction. But how does one cope with the plethora of different descriptions for the same animal in the historic record? A Dutch research group reports on how to aggregate ‘Bunzings’, ‘Ullingen’, and ‘Eierdieven’ (‘Egg-thieves’) into a useful historical ecology knowledge base.

Read More