Author Archives: Peron

Reflection #3: A visualization of Wikipedia Rabbit Holes

Visualization technology is great, and this is another example. Getting a much different perspective and representation of data such that articles represent stars and showing relevance to other articles based on length makes the model easy to digest. It’s a great way to understand the connectedness of topics and ultimately what the editors believe is relevant to link to, this was only done with one hundred thousand articles, it’d certainly be interesting to see the visualization of the whole of Wikipedia and it’s potential rabbit holes. After using the visualization myself you can get lost in the rabbit hole of the model itself, fun to play around with.

Reflection

I was never too familiar with the history of Brooklyn, much less the greater of New York, but the Wikipedia postings revealed a goldmine of information about such a small chunk of land. One of the things I found interesting was after the Canarsee Indians sold the land to the Dutch, it was renamed Breukelen and so far that name has stuck. Also the major rezoning of Brooklyn after World War II allowing it to continually evolve in it’s own right was interesting to read about, and in many ways Brooklyn still operates and maintains an identity apart from New York.