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Visualizing Harry, Books vs. Fan Fiction:

Pie Charts

Information for reading this visualization:

  • The graph above is a pie chart, which probably looks familiar to many of you. Usually, pie charts measure percentages (how much of a whole something is), but this one just shows how similar the top ten words are to Harry in both Rowling's seven novels and the 450 pieces of fan fiction. The bigger the wedge, the higher the similarity index.

  • The color of the wedges are determined by the word, meaning that similar words across the two pie charts will be the same color. This is to help you find similarities.

  • If you hover over a bubble, you can see the word that this wedge applies to as well as its similarity index. If you click on a wedge, it will highlight it. If you click on a word in the index, it will highlight that word wherever it appears in both pie charts.

Questions to prompt analysis:

  • Are there any words that appear in the top ten most similar words in both books and fan fiction?

  • Why do you think these words are so similar to Harry? What does that tell you about Harry as a character?

  • Are there any words that surprise you? Are there any words that make perfect sense to you? Why do you think you are or are not surprised by these words? What about the texts makes you think these words would/wouldn't appear?

So, what did you find? Leave a comment to tell us what you thought and check out what others have been seeing!

If you have any questions on how to read this chart, check out the How To on this particular page here.

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