To explore how to use the graphs created by Lexos, let’s supplement the great documentation on their web site focusing just on what we need for this project.  Lexos looks at a rolling window, which means this:  What if we said, “Looking for the word “IN”, looking in blocks of five words, where do we find our target word?

• Block 1: In a hole in the – 2 instances of “IN”
• Block 2: a hole in the ground – 1 instance of “IN”
• Block 3: hole in the ground there – 1 instance of “IN”
• Block 4: in the ground there lived – 1 instance of “IN”
• Block 5: the ground there lived a – 0 instances of “IN”

If we were standing in the book on the word “hole”, each block that contains that word (blocks 1, 2, and 3) would be considered and the number of instances averaged (2 instances, 1 instance, 1 instance,  – average = 1.33).  That’s a rolling average with a window of five, considered from the point of the word “hole”.

Oy.  It is too much.  I shall sum up with a picture.  I asked Lexos to create a graph of the instances of “Gandalf” in the text with a window of 100 words.

Those are word numbers along the x-bottom axis, which is why we made a word-number-to-chapter-break table in our previous post.  See that gap around word number 44,000?  That’s when he leaves Thorin & Company at the edge of Mirkwood!  Those small spikes between 55,000 and 65,000 are three references to Gandalf, not descriptions of the wizard’s actions or words such as:

[09.031]  ‘Upon my word!’ said Thorin, when Bilbo whispered to him to come out and join his friends, ‘Gandalf spoke true, as usual! A pretty fine burglar you make, it seems, when the time comes.”

Then at 85,000 Gandalf re-enters the action of the book!  We can see the action of the book in the graphic!  I’m so excited that there was a bit of jumping up and down here at Taigh Connlaich when I saw the first lovely picture!   The gap in “Gandalfs” around word 21,000 is, of course, Chapter 5.  Now that we know how to glean information from the Lexos graphs, hold on to your hats.  Tomorrow, Word Fans, we will graph our categories of tagged words!