Word Co-occurrence Matrix [Example]

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Yesterday we discussed about Word Co-occurrence Matrix, today we will discuss how to create one.

A word co-occurrence matrix is a great way to study the relationship between words. You can create one by hand, or use a computer program to do it for you.

To make a co-occurrence matrix by hand, you first need a list of words. Then, for each word in the list, find all of the other words that appear within five words of it. Write down the frequency with which each word appears next to each other word. You can also graph the results using either circles or squares (depending on whether you want them to be connected or not).

Creating a co-occurrence matrix using a computer program is much easier than doing it by hand. All you need is a text file containing all of the words in your study and the program will take care of everything else for you! There are many different programs available online that will do this for free.

While working for this article, I came across this video which showcase it really well. Thought to share it here.

This 4 minute video will explain how can you create Word Co-occurrence Matrix for any set of sentances.

Summarising:

To create a word co-occurrence matrix, follow these steps:

1. Create a table with two columns and as many rows as you have words in your text. In the first column, list all of the words in your text. In the second column, list how many times each word occurs next to each otherword.
2. If you want to analyze multiple texts, create separate matrices for each one.
3. Analyze your data! Look for patterns and groupings of related words.
   What does this tell you about the topic of your text?

Next week we will talk about GloVe and related algorithms.

Have a great weekend.

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