Examining Models

INFOGRAPHIC

Nickolay Lamm, The History of Music

Digital artist Nickolay Lamm created this series of infographics first by looking at Billboard’s “Year-End Hot 100” list of songs since 1960. He then tracked the appearance of specific words—love, for example, and kiss—in the most popular songs through 2013, constructing a graphical representation of each word’s use over time. According to Lamm, “Each cell represents a song. The more red a song is, the more often that particular word appears in the song.”

Source: nickolaylamm.com/thoughts/the-history-of-music

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Reading the Genre

Question

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One possible answer might be: lonely, wait, hold. The additional information would show how often words less positively associated with love show up in popular music. Comparing the frequency of those words with the more positive terms might show how optimistic (or not) popular music was about love in a given time period.

Question

ZrGQxdVVHG9eMcxmSC66uEqTBVAshU0EC8+R7pPnkzt17P56AY1nQPkxsUYCBiB9Tjjfm123u1BAk15rEci+VRrRTIMJmyY7r5BtnCmtF/c2TnJ4t2EUuYKgxPzcvAi4TCzui+M+L85UWa1V3u/xd2IEDgIa8oUvgbGR79jH21vXdSz12x3V/glr05pp1Yrazd4KImaz49NIAugbBLe35SFRpdToZrw2Ef9A4GoceetCBOXn9OvA+0iQC3ls8H+fQpz6Lu8o2HPNLRgR+r/PYFEIZG3ue7SxF9pLAPQswIDK9pXr
One possible answer might be: While the design is clear, I would add a version that includes several words at once, with different colors becoming stronger as each word shows up more often. That way, a more direct comparison could be made among three or four words at once.

Question

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One possible answer might be: One conclusion about pop music might be that our obsession with love has become more about the specific acts associated with it and less about the feelings behind it. The increase in popularity of online dating sites geared towards people with specific tastes supports this conclusion—sites that promise to provide a better match are becoming less popular than those geared towards hooking up.

Question

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One possible answer might be: The three words baby, body, and boys show up differently in books than in songs—in part probably because all are used in the context of many situations other than love. Body is more popular by far than either baby or boys, although baby has increased in frequency since 1960.