A life in words

  • Visualizing Texts as Networks

    For a recent project in my text mining class we were required to explore ways of visualizing textual data. This is a tricky problem due to the nature of text, mainly because it is both categorical and sparse. Visualizing numerical data is, relatively speaking, a piece of cake, because real numbers can all be related…

  • If You’re A Member of Congress, Vote ‘No’ on Health Care Reform!

    To quote one of my favorite economists, Gary Becker: Despite the long debate, many provisions of both the House and Senate bills remain highly controversial. These include, among many others, the way the uninsured would get coverage, the de-emphasis on health savings accounts, the postponement until 2018 of the elimination of the tax advantages from…

  • “No Man Is A Failure Who Has Friends”

    So wrote George Bailey’s guardian angel, and as I was flooded by your kind thoughts and congratulations today I felt rather like George Bailey being saved by those who loved him. Though I may not be who I wish I was, I know I’m not a failure because I have the thoughtfulest, kindest family and…

The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed in constituting this Representative Assembly. It should be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them. That it may be the interest of this Assembly to do strict justice at all times, it should be an equal representation, or in other words equal interest among the people should have equal interest in it. Great care should be taken to effect this, and to prevent unfair, partial, and corrupt elections.John Adams, Thoughts on Government, April 1776