My Twitter Footprint (Dec'08)

TALKING ABOUT VARIOUS DATA MODELLING TRENDS, my experimental twitter footprint from the microblogsphere over the past 30 days of tweeting shows something like this.

Apparently, the patterns show (at least) three trends-of-the-month, if you like:

• Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been influential ("tbs")
• A lot of gratitude-filled human interaction took place ("thanks")
• Cricket was largely ignored (or any sports for that matter)

Overall, the positive vibes (:-), interesting, sure, lol, okay, good, ...) clearly outweighed the strains (in spite of having long and stretched work days). Surely, this would have its contributions towards the real-time positive attitude index which tracks people's moods within the twitter system.

• See also:
• Go here to get your own Wordle from your twitter-feed via TweetStats.com.

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Blog by A Mechanic

THE WEBSITE IS LOADED with a lot of caveats and disclaimers. That gets me thinking if they mean more fun than business..? After putting this blog through their "Analyzer" the results came back naming me to be a "Mechanic" and showed a brain-map claiming to indicate the areas of my brain that are supposedly activated while blogging these posts.

Interesting it may seem, I suppose I would take this simply on a lighter note (in any case, this blog is deliberately focused in certain areas by specifically shoving certain ideas. So, there it goes!).

On the other hand it was surely fun to put some of my friends' blogs through Typealyzer (without their knowing) and to find funny details about them..! They most likely would be getting some pointy tweets now :-)


The analysis goes on describing the personality traits as follows:

The Mechanics: The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and fire-fighters.

Relax, this is strictly for fun!

• See also:
• Go here to analyse your writing personality by Typealyzer.com
• Go here for the Google directory on Personality types and theories.

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Wordle: Measuring Yourself Up in Your Own Words

REGULAR BLOGGERS USE TAG-CLOUDS, and the sincere ones use them wisely. Whilst on one hand the tags help organise and categorise the posts and thoughts therein, they also help the author not to stray too much away (a cluttered tag-cloud is most likely an apparent symptom of this) from the topics and interests the blog is intended for and targeted towards in the first place.

On the other hand, the blog posts are made up in real language using real words that make up the composition by the author. And since the author has his/her own style with grammar and sentence construction, it forms a pattern or trend of words used to produce those thoughts marked under the given tags.

Wordle.net offers this beautiful applet utility that instantly creates a "word-cloud" by consuming your blog feed. Taking it one step further, one can then match this world cloud with the tag cloud of the blog, and make interesting inferences.

[Above: Word-cloud from the recent posts of this blog by Wordle.net]

I also found this word-cloud very useful for literary purposes as well: one could feed in the speeches of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain on the topic of Economic policies, for example, and figure out how much do they agree or, apparently, disagree "figuratively". And also, where they agree (or match up word-by-word) could give the indication where the American Economy needs desperate help - or atleast they way any new leadership is most likely looking at it.

Paul Kedrosky already did such an experiment by comparing US Federal Reserves Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech this year with that of one year ago. The results are really intuitive. Here, take a look.

[Go here to make your own Wordle word-cloud.]

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Statistically...

AT TIMES IT SEEMS impossible to not to include statistics in my analysis while making a proposal for a client or to the higher management. This is also at the cost of pure brilliance of a point that need to statistical support but is rather a marvel of common sense.

Statistics and sensibility are supposed to be the right mix. Statistics are to be handed to the right personal, at the proper time and format, to be utilised in the appropriate manner in aid of the point rather than being the point themselves. This seldom becomes the case nowadays. I couldn't help but mutter to myself at such times the following:

"Statistics are like a lamp-post to a drunken man - more for leaning onto than for illumination."

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