<p>The New York Times ran a piece several weeks ago about a brand new google app which could revolutionize the way humanists and social scientists do their work: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/books/17words.html?_r=1%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/books/17words.html?_r=1</a></p>
<p>It's the sort of thing that can easily burn through a snowy afternoon and I've been experimenting with different ways to capture the ups and downs of Wesleyan, Williams and Amherst over the space of the past 200 years:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>Initially, I thought there could be a problem created by noise from other colleges and universities containing the word "Wesleyan". so, kudos to the folk from Wesleying performing that run:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>It turns out, the noise level from other Wesleyans is fairly low, and certainly not enough to explain the sudden separation of Wesleyan from its Little Three conference starting around 1960. That breakout period seems to coincide rather nicely with the ascension of the Wesleyan University Press as a much cited force in the scholarly world:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>So, then the question becomes how to level the playing field a bit more between Amherst and Williams who have far fewer scholarly pretensions than Wesleyan and Wesleyan which in addition to operating a university press, a humanites center, and several journals also awards the Ph.d as its terminal degree in a half-dozen fields?</p>
<p>One solution might be to include the definite article in the search words. Thus, Wesleyan becomes the Wesleyan University; Amherst becomes "the Amherst College" and Williams becomes "the Williams College". In this way, any reference to the Wes Press is much more likely to be a substantive reference rather than a scholarly citation (and, btw, minimizing "noise" from other Wesleyans):
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>Well, what's going on with this one? It turns out that because Wesleyan was the first college or university in the United States to be named after the English churchman, John Wesley, it was incorporated with the definite article as a part of its name. Thus, up until the 1920s when its usage probably began to subside, one was much more likely to find a string of words containing "The Wesleyan university" than to "the Amherst college" or to "the Williams college".</p>
<p>Finally, in desperation, I decided to truncate the above search results to just the period between 1930 and the year 2008, the latest Google will go, according to <em>Wesleying</em>
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>This is probably the least noisy, most apples-to-apples comparison of the bunch and it offers some interesting points of inquiry. For example, what was happening for Amherst from about 1963 to 1965? Might it have been a spurt of publicity resulting from the dedication of its Robert Frost Library? The main speaker was the President of the United States, in one of his last public appearances in the state of Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy.</p>
<p>Or, what explains Wesleyan's sudden breakout period from about 1965 to 1970? Probably its accession to one of the largest endowments per student ever seen.</p>
<p>In conclusion, what's really interesting about this period from about 1930 to 2008, is that it sort of confirms what we've always suspected: that there really is something resembling a Little Three. No matter which LAC you add to the mix (watch the yellow line), none sustains quite the same level of "chatter" as Wesleyan, Williams and Amherst over time:</p>
<p>The Little Three+Pomona:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>The Little Three+Middlebury:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>The Little Three+Bowdoin:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>The Little Three+Carleton:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>The sole exceptions seem to be Swarthmore and certain members of the old Seven Sisters. Smith and Wellesley bury the Little Three; Vassar, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr seem to keep up rather well:</p>
<p>The Little Three+Smith:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>The Little Three+Wellesley:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>The Little Three+Mount Holyoke:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>The Little Three+Vassar:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>The Little Three+Bryn Mawr:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>
<p>The Little Three+Swarthmore:
The Little Three+Swarthmore:
Google</a> Ngram Viewer</p>