Tag Archives: books

New Digital Humanities Books in the Scholarly Commons!

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Is there anything quite as satisfying as a new book? We just got a new shipment of books here in the Scholarly Commons that complement all our services, including digital humanities. Our books are non-circulating, so you cannot check them out, but these DH books are always available for your perusal in our space.

Stack of books in the Scholarly Commons

Two brand new and two mostly new DH books

Digital Humanities: Knowledge and Critique in a Digital Age by David M. Berry and Anders Fagerjord

Two media studies scholars examine the history and future of digital humanities. DH is a relatively new field, and one that is still not clearly defined. Berry and Fagerjord take a deep dive into the methods that digital humanists gravitate towards, and critique their use in relation to the broader cultural context. They are more critical of the “digital” than the “humanities,” meaning they consider more how use of digital tools affects the society as a whole (there’s that media studies!) than how scholars use digital methods in humanities work. They caution against using digital tools just because they are “better,” and instead encourage the reader to examine their role in the DH field to contribute to its ongoing growth. Berry has previously edited Understanding Digital Humanities (eBook available through Illinois library), which discusses similar issues. For a theoretical understanding of digital humanities, and to examine the issues in the field, read Digital Humanities.

Text Mining with R: A Tidy Approach by Julia Silge and David Robinson

Working with data can be messy, and text even messier. It never behaves how you expect it to, so approaching text analysis in a “tidy” manner is crucial. In Text Mining with R, Silge and Robinson present their tidytext framework for R, and instruct the reader in applying this package to natural language processing (NLP). NLP can be applied to derive meaning from unstructured text by way of unsupervised machine learning (wherein you train the computer to organize or otherwise analyze your text and then you go get coffee while it does all the work). This book is most helpful for those with programming experience, but no knowledge of text mining or natural language processing is required. With practical examples and easy to follow, step-by-step guides, Text Mining with R serves as an excellent introduction to tidying text for use in sentiment analysis, topic modeling, and classification.

No programming or R experience? Try some of our other books, like R Cookbook for an in-depth introduction, or Text Analysis with R for Students of Literature for a step-by-step learning experience focused on humanities people.

Visit us in the Scholarly Commons, 306 Main Library, to read some of our new books. Summer hours are Monday through Friday, 10 AM-5 PM. Hope to see you soon!

Review: The Infographic History of the World by Valentina D’Efilippo and James Ball

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The Infographic History of the World, created by Valentina D’Efilippo and James Ball, consists of various infographics with accompanying commentaries. You can find this book and read it at Scholarly Commons, near our other infographic and visualization books! You can also check it out from a nearby library!

Overall, this book is a compelling read and an interesting idea as a project and some of the infographics were really well done. This book demonstrates the power of infographics to help us present and break down important topics to wider audiences. Yes, this isn’t supposed to be a serious read, but there was a lot I did not like about this book, specifically throughout I got a sense that:

Statue of a person with hands over face. Located by the Main Library entrance facing the UGL

Somewhere a political scientist is crying…     Photo credit to E. Hardesty and the Main Library with the original image found at https://flic.kr/p/rw2Ldz

  • “The story of the last 4,000 years is one of nations being founded, breaking apart, going to war, and coming together” (D’Efilippo & Ball, 2013). For those confused why this is a problem, “nation” is a very modern term and concept so that’s a serious anachronism.
  • Why is the theocracy symbol notably non-Western and not used for the English Civil War, which was apparently about republicanism?
  • A history of the “Net” that doesn’t mention Minitel.
  • First flight goes to the Wright Brothers. No mention of Santos-Dumont or the controversy (for everyone who noticed that inexplicable early aircraft cameo at this year’s Olympic opening).
  • The book is very Anglo-centric.

Sloppy stats!

 

  • I’m suspicious anytime Luxembourg wins something. Are they really the biggest drinkers or how does their small population make this data less meaningful?
  • “Absolute number of cannabis users by region” Absolute? Really?
  • Overall, not enough information on where and how a lot of the statistics were generated and why we should trust those sources. Yes, there is an appendix on the back that explains this to some extent in tiny text but not helpful for people who just glance at the infographic and assume it’s giving us useful information about the world.

Visualization issues!

 

  • Emphasizing form over function — much like the new Macbooks with so few ports they are practically landlocked — many of the infographics fail to present the information in a way that is appropriate for what they are trying to present. For example, the Mona Lisa paint by numbers probably would have been more effective as a timeline.
    • Maybe I’m just too attached to the idea of timelines being well on a line or perhaps maybe the spiral depicted on the book’s cover art.
    • Some of the infographics have way too many things going on and are trying to make too many points at once.
  • The colors on the mental illness brain are too close (and I can’t imagine how that would look to someone who is colorblind), and there are other examples where the colors are very close and render the infographic pretty, but hard to actually use to learn something from.

Finally, the authors’ claim of “not trying to be political” / “this is just for fun” is no excuse for not being thorough especially with information targeted to the public. Full disclosure or not, artists and journalists still need to be careful because what people see can influence the way they think about things. Infographics are not a neutral presentation of information, certain choices were made, and audiences need to think about who made these choices and why. Not as bad as some of the examples on this Visual Literacy and Infographics blog post, but still problematic. Please, do not be reckless when making infographics!

To learn more how to create infographics of your own check out our Savvy Researcher workshop: Introduction to Infographics Using Piktochart!

If you are an undergraduate interested in conducting research and becoming information and visual literate there is an entire set of classes in the history department for this through SourceLab. Take a look at their schedule or talk to Professor Randolph to learn more!

 

Book Review: The Design of Everyday Things

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Designer, psychologist, and respected industry expert Don Norman wants to change your life and the way you see the world and his classic book The Design of Everyday Things might just do that. This book is available for reading in the Scholarly Commons and online through the University Library Catalog.

“People are flexible, versatile, and creative. Machines are rigid, precise, and relatively fixed in their operations. There is a mismatch between the two, one that can lead to enhanced capability if used properly” –  (Norman, 2013)

An update on his 1988 book, The Psychology of Everyday Things, this book continues on the themes of designing for human imperfection and imprecision with new examples. Norman makes a clear, concise, if a little repetitive at times, argument for how we can make the world a better place through better design through a combination of psychology research, jokes, anecdotes, and serious industry examples, peppered with Norman’s rules to live by from his years of design experience, such as his rule of consulting: “I never solve the problem I am asked to solve. Why such a counter-intuitive rule? Because, invariably, the problem I am asked to solve is not the real, fundamental, root problem. It is usually a symptom.” (Norman, 2013)

Undergraduate Library

This book is the reason why doors that don’t work the way we expect them to are now called “Norman doors.”  This blog post was made in loving memory of campus’s favorite “Norman doors,” the former UGL Doors, 1969-2016.

He combines psychology and technology in design principles emphasized throughout the book such as:

  • Don’t force people to rely on their memory, which is limited and easily distracted, to be able to use a machine or system
  • Try to make what the technology does make sense to people so they can figure out what it can be used for from the way it is built and what they would know about other technologies
  • Give people ways to figure out if they are using the machine for what they think they are using the machine for
  • Instead of punishing people for making errors we should find ways to figure out why such an error was possible and how to prevent the same errors from being made again

Some questions this book raises include:

  • What factors contribute to creating positive user experience and how can a designer improve products to make them work better for people?
  • To what extent are problems attributed to human error really examples of bad design?
  • How do we better design the tools that shape our lives so that they can be used by a wider variety of people despite differences in ability and culture?
  • How do we counteract a culture that rewards dangerous behavior and punishes people who make mistakes when trying to develop safer technologies? Why don’t more industries have a semi-anonymous self-reporting system for errors like the airline industry and NASA to find problems that pilots are having and improve designs and systems?
  • How do we best combine best practices for human-centered design, a circular process of observation, idea generation, prototyping, and testing, with the realities of the difficulties of product development, including Don Norman’s Law of Product Development: “The day a product development process starts, it is behind schedule and above budget” (Norman, 2013) as well as managing interdisciplinary teams, which prefer a more linear process?
  • And more!

Feeling inspired yet? Want to innovate the way things are done in your field or at least think about new ways of looking at problems? Here at Scholarly Commons we have books, and workshops, as well as consultations with the experts you need to find the tools you need to clarify and answer your research questions!

Book Review: Statistics Done Wrong by Alex Reinhart

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One book you can read (but not check out, sorry!) at Scholarly Commons is Statistics Done Wrong: The Woefully Complete Guide by Alex Reinhart, an expansion of the popular website.

Reinhart studied physics as an undergraduate but did a masters  in statistics after realizing problems that misunderstandings of statistics were causing in physics and science as a whole. He is now working on a PhD in statistics at Carnegie Mellon.

I don’t know if this would be the best book for someone who has no background knowledge whatsoever. While the author does a good job at explaining a lot of the concepts, his target audience is people who’ve encountered bad statistics in advanced level research, such as medical studies. This book is a good start for those who want insight into the mind of a statistician, even if their math skills aren’t quite there. Although the book isn’t numbers heavy, I still definitely got lost a few times and had to re-read some of the passages. However, I really like the writing style of the author. All I want is to be able to write and articulate difficult concepts in a way as clear, concise, and even funny as the author.

One of the main takeaways of the book was:

“Scientists may be superhumanly caffeinated, but they’re still human, and the constant pressure to publish means that thorough documentation and replication are ignored”(Reinhart, 2015).

I remember learning about the difficulty that psychologists have faced replicating their results (and glad to hear that they as a discipline are improving their efforts to make sure studies and results can be replicated.) and this book explained a lot of the factors at play. For example, Reinhart discussed statistical power, and how not all journals checked if researchers had enough data to determine if their results were statistically significant in the first place. And the book goes in depth into the various issues that can make finding statistical significance a poor measure of whether a phenomena is occurring or not. Furthermore, while I found the debate about publication bias of studies about publication bias as well as “False-Positive Psychology” by Joseph P. Simmons  (doi:10.1177/0956797611417632) hilarious, I too am now worried about the state of research.

One suggestion from Statistics Done Wrong  is more options for making scientific data more accessible so that people don’t try the same failed methods again and again and can learn from others’ experiences. In other words, ways to share the raw data and software code used, even in studies that did not get published in a journal, before the format they are in becomes obsolete. Even though that’s often a major pain to do. Research Data Service are the best people to talk to for learning more about the efforts on campus for solving this problem. They are  your best bet for learning about ways to store and make scientific data more available.

Another problem mentioned in the book is the overall lack of statistical knowledge and education. Here at Illinois, Scholarly Commons is just one of many resources available. For more specific technical questions, we recommend asking a statistician through consulting services through the statistics department, however, this service costs money unless you get the STAT 427 students during spring semester. There are also some free resources and workshops through ATLAS-CITL and online tutorials through Lynda.

Overall, Statistics Done Wrong is an interesting read and a good starting point for those interested in having a better understanding of what to look out for when using statistics in research and ways to improve the way research is done on a whole.