9 Looking Outwards

To conclude the book, I end by looking at three ways in which the model can tell us about things beyond the journals in the years 1876–2013. The first two use a technique I haven’t used yet: applying the LDA model out of sample to texts that the model wasn’t built around. The third (and last) looks at word trends within the the journals in recent years, and makes some speculations about how those trends might continue.