

Google Labs: Books Ngram Viewer - abraham
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/

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jambo
I'm very happy to see Google offering the ngram counts for free download
(<http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/datasets>), which I wasn't expecting, given
their earlier web corpus data release on DVDs. Maybe we'll see an update on
that front, too.

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boredguy8
The "long s" causes problems with OCR and may be an easy-ish fix, if someone
from Google were to take a look.

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=fame,same&yea...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=fame,same&year_start=1750&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s>

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nl
Most interesting I've seen so far:

Wall Street vs Silicon Valley:
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=wall+street,silic...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=wall+street,silicon+valley&year_start=1900&year_end=2010&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

Telephone, Internet:
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=telephone,+intern...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=telephone,+internet&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=1)

Microsoft, Netscape, Yahoo, Google, Facebook:
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Microsoft,Netscap...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Microsoft,Netscape,Yahoo,Google,Facebook&year_start=1970&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=1)

Great War, Hitler, Communist, September+11:
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Great+War,Hitler,...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Great+War,Hitler,Communist,September+11&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=1)

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ovi256
What are those weird cycles in the Wall Street data ? Is that in any way
related to the bubble/retraction cycle ?

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nl
Here's US GDP growth: [http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-
wdi&met=ny_gdp_mk...](http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-
wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=us+gdp+growth)

This could be a better chart:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GDP_growth_1923-2009.jpg>

There might be some kind of relationship there, but I don't think it's the
whole explanation.

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jjclarkson
I think overuse of the word "cool" might finally be heading downward. And it's
interesting to see the blips in the 70's and 80's of "groovy" and "rad"
respectively.

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=cool%2Chip%2Cgroo...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=cool%2Chip%2Cgroovy%2Crad%2C+neat&year_start=1920&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=3)

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akozak
This is really fun to play with: <http://goo.gl/mNSDD>

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shib71
Why would you use a shortener when there is no need? Especially when the URL
is useful as it is here.

~~~
akozak
It's fun to track how many clicks it gets, and I'd already had it on my
clipboard for twitter :)

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msbmsb
Country names/adjectives: English,England,British,French,France,German,Germany

In most cases the adjectival form of a country tracks pretty closely to the
nominal form (e.g. France vs French and others) except for the case of England
vs English/British, the latter two spike from almost nothing around 1795. I
can't think of a good explanation for why those two forms were so rare in
comparison with "England" before 1795, anyone have an idea?

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=English%2CEngland...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=English%2CEngland%2CBritish%2CFrench%2CFrance%2CGerman%2CGermany&year_start=1700&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

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msbmsb
The parsing of contractions/words with apostrophes is broken/unsupported:

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=can%27t%2Ccouldn%...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=can%27t%2Ccouldn%27t%2Cwouldn%27t%2Cshouldn%27t%2Cdon%27t&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=0)
vs
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=t%2Ccan%27t%2Ccou...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=t%2Ccan%27t%2Ccouldn%27t%2Cwouldn%27t%2Cshouldn%27t%2Cdon%27t&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=0)

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srean
The first thing I tried out was different 3-grams of "Colorless green ideas
sleep furiously". Here are the results

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Colorless+green+i...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Colorless+green+ideas%2Ccolorless+green+ideas%2C+green+ideas+sleep%2C+ideas+sleep+furiously%2CColorless+green+ideas+sleep+furiously&year_start=1920&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

The correlation patterns and the year where the curve picks up are
interesting. It would be illuminating to map the peaks.

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goldins
An interesting thing I noticed is that the usage of the word "the" has
decreased by about 1% in the last century (which I think is significant
considering the data). I wonder what the reason for this is.

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yoak
Using American English throughout:

inflammable, flammable:
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=inflammable%2Cfla...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=inflammable%2Cflammable&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=5&smoothing=3)

regardless, irregardless:
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=inflammable%2Cfla...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=inflammable%2Cflammable&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=5&smoothing=3)

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nl
I love this. Here's the story of the world since 1750. The scientific
revolution, followed by the industrial revolution, followed by the computer
revolution, with the internet revolution just starting:

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=science,industria...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=science,industrial,computer,+internet&year_start=1750&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

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igravious
Hey Google!

Combine this with Google Sets ( from Labs as well
[http://labs.google.com/sets?hl=en&q1=immigration&q2=...](http://labs.google.com/sets?hl=en&q1=immigration&q2=taxation&q3=economy&q4=&q5=&btn=Large+Set)
) so that I can feed a list generated by Sets into Ngrams.

Thanks! (And a pony too.)

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wgrover
Try "war":
([http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=war&year_star...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=war&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)).
Nice peaks on WWI, WWII, and Vietnam; maybe a tiny peak on the Gulf War. Any
other search terms where you can see meaningful fluctuations?

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tudorw
is good about to triumph over bad
?[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=angel,devil&y...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=angel,devil&year_start=1820&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

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tudorw
Man vs Machine
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=PC,+secretary&...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=PC,+secretary&year_start=1820&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

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staticshock
i'm surprised that "star wars" has never been able to eclipse "galoshes":

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=star+wars,+galosh...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=star+wars,+galoshes&year_start=1920&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

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hanibash
Someone please explain why "I love you" is cyclical???

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=i+love+you&ye...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=i+love+you&year_start=1920&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

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nl
If you remove the smoothing it looks more spiky then cyclical:
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=i+love+you&ye...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=i+love+you&year_start=1920&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=0)

It's possible that's more to do with the distribution of books Google has
scanned than anything.

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nl
WTF? Why the downvote!?

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jpwagner
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=do+it+all+by+your...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=do+it+all+by+yourself,outsource+it&year_start=1920&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

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jpwagner
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=can+you+help+me,l...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=can+you+help+me,let+me+help+you&year_start=1920&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

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ddlatham
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=color,colour&...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=color,colour&year_start=1820)

Note the effects of the world wars.

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boredguy8
quick brown fox, brown fox, slow brown fox

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=quick+brown+fox,b...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=quick+brown+fox,brown+fox,+slow+brown+fox&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=5)

Am I reading that correctly: People rarely talk about brown foxes without
mentioning their speed, which is never slow?

More importantly: if I wrote and published a book about a slow brown fox,
could I potentially do to foxes what Chomsky did to green ideas?

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boredguy8
wizard,magician,Harry Potter
[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=wizard,magician,H...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=wizard,magician,Harry+Potter&year_start=1920&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=6)

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gmartres
Great! It just lacks an option for case-insensitive search.

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msbmsb
one,two,three,four,five,six,seven,eight,nine,ten

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=one%2Ctwo%2Cthree...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=one%2Ctwo%2Cthree%2Cfour%2Cfive%2Csix%2Cseven%2Ceight%2Cnine%2Cten&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=0)

In order, except "ten" shows up between "six" and "seven".

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ivancho
perfect example of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law>

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msbmsb
Exactly

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nl
I love the "whale fail" image you get if you have an error:
<http://imgur.com/qCDCj>

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dchest
"computer" and "internet" reveal Y2K problem.

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programd
There has been a ginormous increase in the use of the word "ginormous" in the
last decade.

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ntoshev
Google trends for books?

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Jun8
Try "nerd". Like what you would expect. Now, try "sexy nerd". Sigh!

