Suggestion: Please Fix Topics and Interesting Words

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Sean Boisen said:

In fact we're working on alternative display for Topics that should be more readable. I'm not sure about Interesting Words, though i'd personally favor an alternative there as well.

Please.

I don't mind the present format, but agree with tom's line of thought--I'd assumed that the larger size text was triggered by some liguistic heuristic to draw the user to the more signficant word, and perhaps colors were linked to part of speech/TVM.  Maybe if a mouse-over led to an explanatory pop-up?

  Not being Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic savvy, I hadn't gone into any further depth of thought on that yet.

  In one of my Layouts, I noticed that the font size for those reports got crazy small for me...they seem to hard-enforce an inch right/left margin, which becomes a limiting factor when restricting the PG to a modestly narrow (40%) column on my portrait-oriented 1200x1600 monitor.  If I float the PG, the text becomes readable again...wish it would stop enforcing such a huge margin though; nothing else does that.

Rosie Perera said:

I have no idea what the colors are for, but the relative sizes of the words have to do with frequency of occurrence in the passage.

According to Morris Proctor at the Henderson NC Camp Logos the color and size are have to do with one thing. It makes it look neat and NOTHING else.

Mark Barnes said:

Kevin A. Purcell said:

According to Morris Proctor at the Henderson NC Camp Logos the color and size are have to do with one thing. It makes it look neat and NOTHING else.

If he said that, Morris is wrong. The size has to do with relative importance (i.e. roughly speaking it's the ratio of the frequency of the word in this passage to the frequency in the whole Bible).

Thanks Mark for this info.  Now I know why this report made no sense to me (L3 or L4), and it comes from the fact on what I think is important.  For me, those pesty little words like 'not' are very important.

Sean Boisen said:

Size definitely represents relative importance of the individual topics or words to this passage. Color, however, is essentially random art, as is orientation.

(For words, it's essentially frequency as previously mentioned. The computation and statistics are rather more complex for topics/concepts, because a dictionary article on a topic might include lots of references.)

Thanks again Sean for clearing this up for us.

Can you please bring this question back to your design team, "If the users of L4 who know what they are doing (which apparently includes Morris Proctor) are having a hard time deciphering this display, how useful is this display?  This question needs to be answered truthfully because every new user to L4 is going to go through this same process of trying to figure out what the report is trying to tell him/her.  

Sean Boisen said:

Color, however, is essentially random art, as is orientation.

I'm glad color is not used to convey information.  Red-green color blind folks like myself, might have difficulty in some circumstances. We are 7-10% of the population.

Bob Pritchett">

 

tom collinge said:

Can you please bring
this question back to your design team, "If the users of L4 who know what
they are doing (which apparently includes Morris Proctor)
are having a hard time deciphering this display, how useful is this display?  This question needs to be answered truthfully
because every new user to L4 is going to go through this same process of trying
to figure out what the report is trying to tell him/her. 

 The colors simply help distinguish the words. This is like a
map of the US
in which each state is colored differently to emphasize the boundaries. Purple
states aren't different from the green states, unless of course there's a
legend indicating that certain colors map to certain data points.

 We're looking at adding a toggle between the
"cloud" and a "list". One of the reasons I prefer the
cloud, though, is that these aren't precise lists -- and even frequency stats
aren't precise indicators of rank or importance. When we used a list in the past
we'd get people saying "Why is this word on the list?" or "How
could you think that word x was more important than word y in this
passage?" The cloud intentionally (and gently, I think) obfuscates these
things, and does what a statistically generated report should do: offers a
number of interesting possibilities to explore, not a perfect ranked list of
stats to imbue with authority.

 

Thanks Bob for responding to my post.

 For the most part, I would say that I agree with you.  Because stating where we agree would create a
very boring post, I am going to state where we disagree and why I disagree with
you.

 You related the "cloud" to a map of the United States.  I personally, as a user, see this cloud more
like a graph than a map.  This being
said, I am going to go with your map image first.  As you stated, colors are used in a map of
the United States
to point out the boundaries between states. 
If a map has the same color for all of the states, then data (the state
boundaries) has been lost.  Therefore, color
is not used on a map to simply to make it look pretty.  Color is used, even on a simple map of the United States,
to express information.

 We are so trained that when we are looking at something that
is expressing information (map, graph, etc. . .), we interpret colors as represent
data.  Sometimes this data representation
is direct (green = growth), and sometimes this data representation is used in
an indirect fashion (as in your map of the United States example).

 Like I said above, I view this “cloud” more as a graph than
a map.  Maps are used to represent geographic
data (state boundaries, where I-5 starts and stops,  etc. . .). 
Graphs are used to represent statistical information, and this ‘cloud’
is attempting to represent statistical information.

 As you stated above, “A statistically generated report
should offer a number of interesting possibilities to explore.”  A couple of questions that a statistically
generated report can produce are, “Why were profits so low for the month of January?  Why has the average temperate for the month
of February increased over the past ten years?” 
A statistically generated report will offer a number of interesting
possibilities to explore only if the data it is representing is done in a clear
and precise manner.  This is why your statement,
“The cloud intentionally (and gently, I think) obfuscates these things” struck
me as being odd.  While I think “obfuscates”
is a very cool word that should be used more often, I do not think obfuscating
information is helpful.  By definition, “to
obfuscate” something is to make something obscure or unclear, especially by
making it unnecessarily complicated (Encarta Dictionary).  When things are obscure, unclear, or
unnecessarily complicated, people will not spend much time investigating what
the chart is trying to express because it takes too much work.

 The difficulty as it relates to “interesting words” is how
does someone classify a word as being “interesting?”  People are going to use different criteria to
classify a word (or phrase) as being “interesting.”  For me personally, the word’s definition and
how does the author use the word can makes a word “interesting” much more than
how many times the word is used.  To use
a couple of examples from this past Sunday’s RCL Gospel reading (Luke
13:31-35).

 Here is the text for Luke 13:35 ἰδοὺ ἀφίεται ὑμῖν ὁ οἶκος ὑμῶν.
λέγω [δὲ] ὑμῖν, οὐ μὴ ἴδητέ με ἕως [ἥξει ὅτε] εἴπητε, Εὐλογημένος ὁ ἐρχόμενος ἐν
ὀνόματι κυρίου.  Οὐ (not) is not very interesting when it is
by itself.  It occurs 3757 times in the
LXX/NT. Μὴ (not) Is also not
very interesting when it is by itself. 
This word occurs 4217 times in the LXX/NT.  Now when these two words (οὐ μὴ ~ not not) occur
together, they become very interesting.

 Backing up one verse, here is Luke 13:34 Ἰερουσαλὴμ
Ἰερουσαλήμ, ἡ ἀποκτείνουσα τοὺς προφήτας καὶ λιθοβολοῦσα τοὺς ἀπεσταλμένους πρὸς
αὐτήν, ποσάκις ἠθέλησα ἐπισυνάξαι τὰ τέκνα σου ὃν τρόπον ὄρνις τὴν ἑαυτῆς νοσσιὰν
ὑπὸ τὰς πτέρυγας, καὶ οὐκ ἠθελήσατε. 
Here, Jesus is referring himself
as a ὄρνις (hen – a protective mothering figure).  This word only occurs four times in the
LXX/NT.  For me, this is very
interesting.  As a matter of fact, this
is what I preached on yesterday.

 Reading between your lines, I believe that you want L4 to aid
your customers in examining scripture.  You
do not want L4 to create lists that are imbuing with authority simply because
L4 created the list.  Anytime L4 creates
a list, a cloud, a thing-a-ma-jig, it is going to have authority because L4
created it.  The best way to get around
the “imbuing with authority” issue is to allow the user to create an “algorithm”
on how he/she deems what words are interesting. 
Because I think this is almost impossible to do, I believe the second
best way to get around the “imbuing with authority” issue is by giving us the
raw data on how often the word appears (in is form and lemma) in the LXX/NT, how
often the author uses the word in his book(s), how often the author uses the
word in the text that is being examined. 
I believe this is the only way you will be able to avoid questions like,
“Why is this word on the list?  How could
you think that word x was more important than word y in this passage?  Why is the font for this word is larger than that
word?" 

I would appreciate that too!