5 ms·

An analysis of Steve Jobs tribute messages displayed by Apple

184 points by ot 15y ago

thisduck 15y ago
Wouldn't the regex for "mac" also match "macintosh" and "imac" and inflate the numbers?
- danielpal 15y ago
  True, he probably should change the regex to something like "^mac" which would also match macintosh. So "^mac\s" should be fine. I would probably use: ^[M|m]ac[\s|\.]+
- mdonahoe 15y ago
  Wouldn't it also match "machine", "stomach", "diplomacy", etc?
- neilkod 15y ago
  You are all 100% correct about the regex. Before converting the product-identifying matching code to Python, I did it in bash using grep -iw to match whole words. for i in newton macintosh macbook ibook iie mac iphone ipod imac ipad II+ iigs LaserWriter osx 'apple ?tv' itunes '\]\[' imovie do stevejobs_tribute.txt |wc -l`" echo "$i: `egrep -wi "${i}s?" $INPUTFILE|wc -l`" done But this was difficult to maintain. I wanted the ability to print a 'friendly' looking product name (the dict's key) and maintain the counts in a variable. When I made the move from bash to python, I knew that there would be some overlap when I pushed this code (in the name of shipping!). I need to split the sentences into proper tokens and then check each token for a product match. I'm already splitting the sentence into tokens for part-of-speech tagging so it shouldn't be difficult to do. tl;dr known issue on the Mac regex, I needed to publish it and get back to work!
  - ot 15y ago
    You can use '\b' which matches "word boundaries", so the regex would be something like "\bmac\b".
    - neilkod 15y ago
      Thanks, I'm going to update the code and re-run the numbers.
__rkaup__ 15y ago
Why is this blocked by my ISP under "Pornography"?
- kristofferR 15y ago
  Because you have a poor ISP. No proper ISP should block anything (except maybe child porn, but that's a slippery slope). Change your DNS to either Google's (8.8.8.8) or OpenDNS. If you live in a repressive country prohibiting pornography you should get a VPN. I'm satisfied with my choice of strongVPN.com
  - __rkaup__ 15y ago
    Unfortunately, that repressive regime I live in is my mum's house.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      You should get a VPN/shell host somewhere then... or better yet, tell your mom to knock it off.
      - MichaelApproved 15y ago
        "tell your mom to knock it off." There could be young children who have access to that computer or that network.
        0x12 15y ago
        Just imagine they learned about Apple.
        burgerbrain 15y ago
        In my years of experience: 1) Filters never block shit. 2) You don't "accidentally" find porn anyway. But god forbid they hypothetically see a breast.
unreal37 15y ago
Funny that most of the references to "Newton" seem to be Issac Newton and not the Apple product.
- alanfalcon 15y ago
  Well, it makes sense. The only thing Steve Jobs did for the Newton was kill it.
Steko 15y ago
No word cloud?
- neilkod 15y ago
  I'm over word clouds by now. If you look at my site, you'll see that I've done my fair share of them, including one generated from the script of the big lebowski. However, Paul Kedrosky did a pretty nice job with one - check it out at https://twitter.com/pkedrosky/status/127796382684819456 https://twitter.com/pkedrosky/status/127796382684819456
nodesocket 15y ago
Here is the Word Cloud. Enjoy! http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4285031/Steve_Jobs_Tribute_Mesages http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4285031/Steve_Jobs_Tribute_M...
- hm2k 15y ago
  I came here to do this: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4286122/Remember_Steve http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4286122/Remember_Steve
eleusive 15y ago
It looks like the most commonly-used adjective to describe Jobs was "great" - I wonder how many of those instances were actually "insanely great".
skeletonjelly 15y ago
Interesting, but not exactly surprising. I guess when your source data is a whitelist of adulations, there are only so many conclusions you can make. NLTK looks interesting though.

184 points by ot 15y ago

thisduck 15y ago

Wouldn't the regex for "mac" also match "macintosh" and "imac" and inflate the numbers?

danielpal 15y ago
True, he probably should change the regex to something like "^mac" which would also match macintosh. So "^mac\s" should be fine. I would probably use: ^[M|m]ac[\s|\.]+
mdonahoe 15y ago
Wouldn't it also match "machine", "stomach", "diplomacy", etc?
neilkod 15y ago
You are all 100% correct about the regex. Before converting the product-identifying matching code to Python, I did it in bash using grep -iw to match whole words. for i in newton macintosh macbook ibook iie mac iphone ipod imac ipad II+ iigs LaserWriter osx 'apple ?tv' itunes '\]\[' imovie do stevejobs_tribute.txt |wc -l`" echo "$i: `egrep -wi "${i}s?" $INPUTFILE|wc -l`" done But this was difficult to maintain. I wanted the ability to print a 'friendly' looking product name (the dict's key) and maintain the counts in a variable. When I made the move from bash to python, I knew that there would be some overlap when I pushed this code (in the name of shipping!). I need to split the sentences into proper tokens and then check each token for a product match. I'm already splitting the sentence into tokens for part-of-speech tagging so it shouldn't be difficult to do. tl;dr known issue on the Mac regex, I needed to publish it and get back to work!
- ot 15y ago
  You can use '\b' which matches "word boundaries", so the regex would be something like "\bmac\b".
  - neilkod 15y ago
    Thanks, I'm going to update the code and re-run the numbers.

__rkaup__ 15y ago

Why is this blocked by my ISP under "Pornography"?

kristofferR 15y ago
Because you have a poor ISP. No proper ISP should block anything (except maybe child porn, but that's a slippery slope). Change your DNS to either Google's (8.8.8.8) or OpenDNS. If you live in a repressive country prohibiting pornography you should get a VPN. I'm satisfied with my choice of strongVPN.com
- __rkaup__ 15y ago
  Unfortunately, that repressive regime I live in is my mum's house.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    You should get a VPN/shell host somewhere then... or better yet, tell your mom to knock it off.
    - MichaelApproved 15y ago
      "tell your mom to knock it off." There could be young children who have access to that computer or that network.
      - 0x12 15y ago
        Just imagine they learned about Apple.
      - burgerbrain 15y ago
        In my years of experience: 1) Filters never block shit. 2) You don't "accidentally" find porn anyway. But god forbid they hypothetically see a breast.

unreal37 15y ago

Funny that most of the references to "Newton" seem to be Issac Newton and not the Apple product.

alanfalcon 15y ago
Well, it makes sense. The only thing Steve Jobs did for the Newton was kill it.

Steko 15y ago

No word cloud?

neilkod 15y ago
I'm over word clouds by now. If you look at my site, you'll see that I've done my fair share of them, including one generated from the script of the big lebowski. However, Paul Kedrosky did a pretty nice job with one - check it out at https://twitter.com/pkedrosky/status/127796382684819456 https://twitter.com/pkedrosky/status/127796382684819456

nodesocket 15y ago

Here is the Word Cloud. Enjoy! http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4285031/Steve_Jobs_Tribute_Mesages http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4285031/Steve_Jobs_Tribute_M...

hm2k 15y ago
I came here to do this: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4286122/Remember_Steve http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4286122/Remember_Steve

eleusive 15y ago

It looks like the most commonly-used adjective to describe Jobs was "great" - I wonder how many of those instances were actually "insanely great".

skeletonjelly 15y ago

Interesting, but not exactly surprising. I guess when your source data is a whitelist of adulations, there are only so many conclusions you can make. NLTK looks interesting though.