Discovering Pattern and Structure in Cultural Traces: Death and Dreams in Low Dimensions

Explore a conference talk on innovative methods for analyzing large-scale cultural data presented by Jacob Foster at IPAM's Analyzing High-dimensional Traces of Intelligent Behavior Workshop. Discover how combining word embedding techniques with sparse dictionary learning transforms texts into interpretable topic sequences. Learn about the discourse atom topic modeling (DATM) approach and its application in analyzing official reports of violent death. Examine the integration of DATM with network analysis to uncover the topical structure of narratives, demonstrated through a study of dream reports. Gain insights into the emerging science of phenomenal experience, which enables systematic analysis of subjective reports at scale while addressing privacy concerns and computational challenges. Recorded on September 25, 2024, this 57-minute presentation offers a glimpse into cutting-edge techniques for uncovering patterns and structures in vast cultural datasets.