In these visualizations, a given text—the “specimen”—is compared to some larger group of texts—the “normative” text—using the Dunning log likelihood statistical analysis, which gives weight to words in a text according to how their frequency of use in the specimen text differs from the norm.
All visualizations feature a cloud that varies from gray to blue. In this cloud, the size of the word corresponds to the number of times the word was used in a given address. The word's color depends on how statistically unlikely the word is in the normative text; in other words, a blue word was used more in the given speech than in the others it is compared to.
Some visualizations feature a rose-colored cloud, which features words that were conspicuously absent from a given speech, relative to the comparative corpus. The larger the word, in the rose cloud, the more unusual it is for the word to not have been used.
Each inaugural address is compared to the five addresses nearest to it in time, the ten nearest addresses, and all addresses in U.S. history. Click on a thumbnail to see a full-size version.
| Speech | vs. Five Nearest |
vs. Ten Nearest |
vs. All Others |
|---|---|---|---|
| washington 1 |
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| washington 2 |
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| jadams |
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| jefferson 1 |
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| jefferson 2 |
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| madison 1 |
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| madison 2 |
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| monroe 1 |
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| monroe 2 |
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| jqadams |
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| Speech | vs. Five Nearest |
vs. Ten Nearest |
vs. All Others |
| jackson 1 |
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| jackson 2 |
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| vanburen |
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| whharrison |
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| polk |
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| taylor |
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| pierce |
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| buchanan |
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| lincoln 1 |
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| lincoln 2 |
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| Speech | vs. Five Nearest |
vs. Ten Nearest |
vs. All Others |
| grant 1 |
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| grant 2 |
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| hayes |
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| garfield |
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| cleveland 1 |
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| bharrison |
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| cleveland 2 |
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| mckinley 1 |
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| mckinley 2 |
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| troosevelt |
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| Speech | vs. Five Nearest |
vs. Ten Nearest |
vs. All Others |
| taft |
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| wilson 1 |
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| wilson 2 |
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| harding |
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| coolidge |
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| hoover |
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| fdr 1 |
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| fdr 2 |
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| fdr 3 |
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| fdr 4 |
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| Speech | vs. Five Nearest |
vs. Ten Nearest |
vs. All Others |
| truman |
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| ike 1 |
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| ike 2 |
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| kennedy |
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| johnson |
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| nixon 1 |
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| nixon 2 |
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| carter |
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| reagan 1 |
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| reagan 2 |
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| Speech | vs. Five Nearest |
vs. Ten Nearest |
vs. All Others |
| ghwbush |
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| clinton 1 |
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| clinton 2 |
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| gwbush 1 |
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| gwbush 2 |
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| obama |
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