buzzArxiv

TL;DR: I talk about some text frequency analysis I did on the arxiv.org corpus using python, mysql, and R to identify trends and spot interesting new physics results.

 

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned some optimization I had done on a word-frequency anlysis tool. I thought I’d say a bit more here about the tool (buzzArxiv), which I’ve put together using Python and R to find articles that are creating a lot of ‘buzz’.

For those who don’t know, arxiv.org is an online repository of scientific papers, categorized by field (experimental particle physics, astrophysics, condensed matter, etc…). Most of the pre-print articles posted to the arxiv eventually also get submitted to journals, but it’s usually on the arxiv that the word about new work gets disseminated in the community. The thing is, there’s just gobs of new material on there every day. The experimental, pheonomonolgy, and theory particle physics mailings can each have a dozen or so articles per day.

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