For all of the scholars and academics that occupy our fine city, you think they’d take a break from things like medicine and 3D printing for just one second to focus on things that are truly important. Luckily, Benjamin Schmidt, a professor in Northeastern’s Department of History, has done exactly that.
Schmidt, using a database he created called Bookworm, created an interactive map that allows you to “explore lexical trends” in “The Simpsons.” What that means is, through his chart, you can now find out how frequently particular words have been used throughout the 25 years of the show. For example, “Perry,” a proper noun, but great word nonetheless, is used with the frequency of 5.48 words per million words in season 7. Other than searching your own name, there are countless little experiments you could try with this thing, some of them even yielding cool information about the evolution of the show’s language. Anyway, the proof is in the pudding, so try for yourself below, courtesy of bookworm.culturomics.org
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