When I was picking a major for college, I was split between engineering and computer science. Mostly because I don’t think I would be able get a job with a history degree.

My dad convinced me to do engineering but I still occasionally mess around in Java. But now that we are going over textual analysis in class, and I am excited. I looked over some of the basics of Python and it is a bit similar to Java. I also have enjoyed the addition of analysis on pop-culture because it is analyzing media that I already consume instead of digging up a copy of some obscure poet from the 15th century.

For the final project I’d like to use these two ideas. Specifically using textual analysis on a new form of media and a new obscure way of expressing one’s self. I would like to do an analysis on Twitch chat. I’m still not fully sure about the code aspect. I haven’t had time to look through the code we used on Project Gutenberg. One idea I have for separating Twitch chat users is to have each colon be a new person, there would be some error but for the most part colons aren’t used very often in chat. For the actual analysis I would either compare the chat of two different games with similar viewer counts, to see how different games attract different commenters. Or I would compare the linguistics of two different time zones. Maybe see the frequency of punctuation, or see if there are any major word differences. I would copy the chat into a separate document for analysis but it would be interesting to have an analysis directly in chat, which would be able to see the speed of commenters. For the application, the only possibility I see is for it to be used in marketing, to see which products would be the best for each audience.

If that idea doesn’t work. Another option would be to do an analysis of modern art, or just art in general. I don’t think anyone really understands modern art, so it would be interesting to see if it could be understood numerically.

Splatter art was created by Jackson Pollock. He added whole body movement to the creation of art. At a point, Pollock stopped naming his art but instead he started to number it. I’d like to do a numeric analysis on his work. To either see if a pattern can be found in his work, or to see if his work can be found by using quantitative features. Another idea would be to compare his work to modern splatter art.

I have some experience manipulating pictures in Java and MatLab, so this could be a more achievable goal. I would do an analysis of the colors of various pieces, possibly try to see which areas certain colors are more attracted to. The main problem would be getting access to pieces, wheres there would be no problem with Twitch chat.

“Jackson Pollock and His Paintings.” Jackson Pollock. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2016. http://www.jackson-pollock.org/.

Hemphill, Libby. 2014. “Introducing Text Analytics to Undergraduates.” Libby Hemphill. October 16. http://libbyh.com/2014/10/16/introducing-text-analytics-to-undergraduates/