Text as Data

CHAPTER 1Text Mining and Text Analytics

This chapter describes some of the background and recent history of text analytics and provides real-world examples of how text analytics works and solves business problems. This treatment provides examples of common forms of text analytics and examples of solution approaches. The discussion ranges from a history of the analytical treatment of text expression up to the most recent developments and applications.

BACKGROUND AND TERMINOLOGY

The analysis of written and spoken expression has been developing as a computer application over several decades. Some of the earliest research in machine learning and artificial intelligence dealt with the problem of reading and interpreting text as well as in text translation (machine translation). These early activities gave rise to a field of computer science known as natural language processing (NLP). The recent rapid development of computer power – including processing power, large data, high bandwidth communication, and cloud-based, high-capacity computer memory – has provided a major new (and considerably broadened) emphasis on computerized text processing and text analysis.

TEXT ANALYTICS: WHAT IS IT?

Text processing and text analysis are components of the developing area of understanding written and spoken expression. Commonly occurring text documents – such as traditional newspapers, journals and periodicals, and, more recently, electronic documents, such as social media posts and emails ...