MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

Are PE and Uitenhage on the Decline?

By

www.MyPE.co.za: According to Google’s Ngram, the answer is a resounding yes.

The Google Books Ngram Viewer is a tool that lets you research how popular words and phrases have been over several centuries, based on their appearance in the over 5 million books that have been “read” by Googles Optical Character Recognition Scanner (OCR).

To be fair I also punched in the words ‘Nelson Mandela Bay’ and ‘Despatch’ as well. Owing to possible confusion between despatch (to send) and Despatch (the town) I had to remove Despatch from the comparison.

As you can see the mention of ‘Nelson Mandela Bay’ in books is flatlining and never quite got off the ground.

Do the results conform to accepted research methodology and compiling of statistics? Probably not. But, using the data as a guideline is interesting.

The flaws are related to the type and number of books scanned, popularity and spelling of words through the ages, proper recognition of words via OCR – e.g. the ‘f’ and ‘s’ are often confused by modern OCR programmes, the subject matter of the books scanned, accurate metadata, dating, demand for books, economic state of the world and so on. See below for some more Ngram boobies.

Ngram For PE
Visit the Google Books Ngram results page for Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage and Nelson Mandela Bay and see a number of links to different years below the graph. Clicking on those links will show the books scanned for that time period.
Of course this massive project is all in the name of making a buck and what peeves the hell out of me is that if you attempt to read any of the books referenced you get this message:

It looks like you’re located outside of the United States. Although you’re welcome to read about Google eBooks, please note that Google eBooks are only available for sale to customers in the U.S. at this time.

I am getting a little tired of seeing Google release everything to the USA first and treat the rest of the world like we are ‘not worthy’.

More Boobies from Ngram:

Let us know your discoveries in the comments section.

Submit Your Press Release | Check Your Free Business Listing | Classifieds | Live Chat.

The following two tabs change content below.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profileMy Flickr profileMy Pinterest profile

Alan Straton

Chief Cook, Bottle Washer and Broom Mechanic at MyPE
Passionate about Port Elizabeth and definitely NOT packing for Perth. Alan's ethos is epitomised in the words of Nelson Mandela; "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society. If need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." See more articles by Alan.