What can machine learning tell us about the French Revolution? This episode describes a brief history lesson of the digital humanities. Then, why do we constantly hear about the word “reproducibility” in the context of scientific research? We’ll explore what this means and why it seems to keep happening.

Sources

• Machine learning can offer new tools, fresh insights for the humanities

• PNAS article: Individuals, institutions, and innovation in the debates of the French Revolution

• Search and Replace: Josephine Miles and the Origins of Distant Reading

• Concordance of the Poetical Works of John Dryden

• Index Thomisticus

• Roberto Busa, S.J., and the Invention of the Machine-Generated Concordance

• How big data has created a big crisis in science

• Many Labs 2: Investigating Variation in Replicability Across Samples and Settings