The Delta Spreadsheets
Copyright © 2005, 2007, 2008 by David L. Hoover
These
spreadsheets
with macros accept as input raw word frequency lists
and analyze authorship using John Burrows's Delta and my various Delta
Primes. There is an
abstract of my ALLC/ACH poster presentation in
Victoria, June 18, 2005 that will explain
the spreadsheets more fully. My DH2007
poster
gives more detail on the new versions, which are more compact because
of a new formula for Delta by Shlomo Argamon (2008); also see my abstract, "Updating
Delta and Delta Prime."
The 2008 versions have been largely rewritten and are MUCH faster. They
also now include a macro to import the word lists automatically. Note
that only DeltaCalc2008
contains the newest annotations to the macros. To learn how to use
these sheets, download "Using the Delta Calculation Worksheets.pdf",
below.
The
spreadsheets and macros presented here may be used and distributed
freely by anyone, so long as their use is acknowledged in any published
work. I would also appreciate hearing about any modifications or
improvements you may make.
Use
them at your own risk. I have not discovered any problems in using
them, but cannot guarantee they will not cause any.
For
a discussion of Delta and it's use, see the following articles:
- Burrows, J. F. (2002a). “‘Delta’:
a measure of stylistic difference and a guide to likely authorship.”
Literary and
Linguistic Computing 17: 267-287.
- Burrows, John F. (2002b). “The
Englishing
of Juvenal:
computational stylistics and translated texts.” Style 36: 677-99.
- Burrows, J. F. (2003). “Questions
of authorship: attribution and beyond.” Computers and the Humanities
37: 5-32.
- Hoover, David L. Testing
Burrows's Delta, Literary
and Linguistic Computing
2004 19: 453-475
- Hoover, David L. Delta
Prime? Literary
and Linguistic Computing 2004 19: 477-495
- Hoover, D. L. (2007). “Corpus Stylistics,
Stylometry, and the Styles of Henry James,” Style 41(2) 2007: 174-203.
- Hoover, D. L. (2007). “Quantitative Analysis and
Literary Studies,” A Companion to Digital Literary
Studies, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007: 517-33.
- Hoover, D. L. (2007). “Word Frequency,
Statistical
Stylistics, and Authorship Attribution,” in Dawn Archer (ed.), What's in a Word-list? Investigating Word Frequency and Keyword Extraction. Aldershot, U.K: Ashgate, 2008, in press.
- van Dalen-Oskam, Karina, and Joris van Zundert. (2007).
“Delta for Middle
Dutch—Author and Copyist Distinction in Walewein.”
Literary and
Linguistic Computing 2007 22(3): 345-362.
- Argamon, Shlomo. (2008). “Interpreting
Burrows’s Delta: Geometric and Probabilistic
Foundations.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 2008 23(2): 131-147.
Current
Versions (2008):
DeltaCalc2008.xls
Standard
version of Delta analysis, but with Argamon's formula.
DeltaCalcLz2008.xls
Delta-Lz (see my
"Delta Prime?" for explanation), but with Argamon's formula.
DeltaCalcOz2008.xls
Delta-Oz (see my "Delta Prime?" for
explanation), but with Argamon's formula.
Note: the distribution versions contain some data from previous
analyses. This is intentional, allowing anyone wanting to try them to
run an analysis already prepared.
Macro Descriptions and Instructions: