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Main > TourPortal > TAPoR > TaporRecipes > ExerciseTwentyFive



Aggregate Information from the Web
To Explore a Particular Concept


This exercise uses this Recipe, the Googlizer, frequency lists, concordances and collocation to efficiently explore information from the web for a particular topic.

It applies a recipe to real textual example which is freely available on the internet so you can do the steps yourself and see the results.

This recipe and exercise will soon be available as a PDF download.

Exercise Steps

  1. In this exercise we will explore the topic of Snow Leopards;
  2. Input the term leopard into a synonym finding tool such as Eva at POETS
  3. We find the following words which may help us locate information on snow leopards:

    In this case we learn that the latin name for the leopard is Panthera pardus and other memebers of this group are: lions; leopards; snow leopards; jaguars; tigers; cheetahs; saber-toothed tigers.


  4. Login to TAPoR at TAPoR portal; ;
  5. Input the term Snow Leopard into the into the TAPoR Googlizer which results in a set of links to web pages similar to the following: 

    Your 10 Ruby-Google results
    1. Title: Snow Leopard
      URL: http://www.agarman.dial.pipex.com/snowlep.htm
      Brief Info: Offers information about the snow leopard.
       Facts include habitat map, life span, and description.

    2. Title: Snow Leopard
      URL: http://www.kidsplanet.org/factsheets/snow_leopard.html
      Brief Info: Includes color photographs and facts about
       the appearance, size, diet, habitat, and life span of
       this solitary feline.

    3. Title: Where Conservation Starts with Communities 
      Snow Leopard Trust
      URL: http://www.snowleopard.org/
      Brief Info: Why not order beautiful organic flowers
       and benefit snow leopards at the same time! 
      ... Learn how the Trust is protecting more than
       the snow leopard....

    4. Title: Snow Leopard Trust
      URL: http://www.snowleopard.org/islt/index2.html
      Brief Info: Redirect page for the flash movie, plight of
       the snow leopard.

    5. Title: Snow Leopard (Uncia uncia)
      URL: http://www.bigcatrescue.org/snow_leopard.htm
      Brief Info: Snow Leopard Facts, Snow Leopard
       Photos, Snow Leopard Sounds and stories about 
      Snow Leopards can all be found at the 
      world's largest big cat rescue and ...

    6. Title: Snow Leopard
      URL: http://www.pbs.org/kratts/world/eurasia/leopard/index.html
      Brief Info: Contains information about the snow leopard.
       Information includes habitat, description, and food sources.

    7. Title: The Snow Leopard Conservancy
      URL: http://www.snowleopardconservancy.org/
      Brief Info: Demonstrating innovative, grassroots measures
       leading local people toward effective stewardship of the
       endangered snow leopard and its habitat.

    8. Title: Snow Leopard Mountain Sports - Goodbye to All
      URL: http://www.thesnowleopard.com/close.html
      Brief Info: Our staff has worked tirelessly to give you
       the best service and support of any company online
       and for those of you that have come to know The Snow Leopard ...

    9. Title: Snow Leopard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
      URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_leopard
      Brief Info: The snow leopard or ounce (Uncia uncia)
       is a large cat native to the mountain ranges of ... 
      ARKive - images and movies of the snow leopard (Uncia uncia) ...

    10. Title: Snow Leopard
      URL: http://www.nature.ca/NOTEBOOKS/ENGLISH/esnowlep.htm
      Brief Info: More than 150 snow leopards live in zoos where
       they have been bred successfully. The snow leopard is now listed as an endangered species and is legally ...

  6. Save the results to the Databench. Note that the text saved to the Databench is in XML format.
  7. Use the TAPoR List Words Tool on the text in the Databench to get a to find interesting words;
1 The resulting word list should resemble this:
Summary: There are 114 unique words  and  there are 344
 words in total. 62 words occurred once and 
29 words occurred twice.
WordsCounts
Leopard------12
Snow------12
Www------10
The------9
Org------8
Info------5
Brief------5
Of------5
And------5
Snowleopard------4
Conservation------2
For------2
Leopards------2
With------2
Com------2
Habitat------2
Conservancy------2
Help------2
Community------2
Factsheets------2

  Trust------2
Kidsplanet------2
Your------2
Snowleopardconservancy------2
Snowlep------2
Common------2
Is------2
Appearance------2
Snow_leopard------2
Different------1
Based------1
Will------1
We------1
$2000------1
Photographs------1
Place------1
Life------1
Thirty------1
Endangered------1


Clearly one of things we can learn from the frequency list is that snow leoprds are endangered and there are conservation efforts underway to preserve the species.


  1. Choose endangered from the list above and input this term along with snow leopards into TAPoR Find Co-occurrence Tool to confirm that it is Snow Leopards which are endangered. Choose to sort the results by frequency.
1 The results of this should resemble:

1 co-occurrences found
 Conservancy promotes community-based stewardship of the  
endangered 
 
<b>   
snow leopard   
</b>, its prey and habitat.


As we can see, in fact these words do co-occur and we are can conclude that it is Snow Leopards which are endangered. We can than pursue this train of thought by googling these words within quotes for a more precise exploration of this topic.


Next Steps/Further Information

-- ShawnDay - 21 October 2006

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