In the article by Derek Mueller, One technique of visually representing small data is through usage of graphs. Because they are able to “change the scale of detail”, they can “help us engage with patterns of disciplinary activity that would otherwise be difficult to discern” (197).
Personally, graphs are incredibly helpful to me when I’m trying to read through data sets. The numbers seem to blur together, but when they’re modeled in a graph, it gives an organized visual pattern that seems to clear up that blur. Also, when building your own data collection, graphs are perfect to organize them and predict new trends.
When utilizing graphs in order to find patterns in a number of articles, Mueller states that an article is the default scale for the traditional scholarly journal, and they already include “numerous features designed to help readers access small-scale units” of the article, such as the issue and article from a journal without having to read it more thoroughly first. “A simple table of contents, for example, supports a glancing sort of distant reading at one scale, and article abstracts allow for distant reading at a scale only slightly closer to the stuff of the article than the title and author listing” (198).
In zooming in, I think it’s cool how close both aspects of close reading and distant reading can go into graphs as well, since I’ve only viewed close or distant reading being something that can only be achieved by looking at a book. I’ve never considered that the whole of a journal or database, or even a graph, can utilize both readings.
“To clearly and responsibly engage with this complicated, shifting expanse, we need the full spectrum of data, not only the list of the most frequently appearing names. The full distribution is required if we are to examine the relationship between what has happened at the head of the distribution and what has happened furthest from in, in the long tail” (215). But looking at the long tail and comparing the highest point of the graph over time, Mueller is able to gain “new insights, new provocations, and new questions: what has changed, over time, in the relationship between the head of the curve and the long tail?” (215).
Digital Humanities 