Alice Pawley is an assistant professor of 
SciWo is an assistant professor of geosciences. She blogs about the intersection of science and real life - primarily based on her first-hand experiences. Her older posts can be found 
One of my graduate students reminded my co-instructors and me of a fun internet tool called Wordle which takes text you give it, and makes a graphical representation of the text based on the number of times certain words appear. We used this idea to summarize the course we've just finished on the history and philosophy of engineering education, and then I wanted to keep playing so I made a wordle of my dissertation. The whole thing. Well, except for the references.
It's below the fold. If you want to play along, wordle your dissertation at http://www.wordle.net and share the link with us either from the wordle site or on your own blog. I can't wait to see them!
Here it is, click on it to go to Flickr to make it bigger:
Made at www.wordle.net.
Education & Careers
Comments
Does statistics count?
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/379615/Untitled
Posted by: dean | December 11, 2008 4:13 PM
Nice! Here's mine:
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/379637/Between_Discipline_and_Profession
Posted by: B. Jesiek | December 11, 2008 4:22 PM
My Masters Thesis '98
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/379980/Masters_Thesis
Posted by: Ixu | December 11, 2008 6:18 PM
I wordled my book instead:
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/380011/The_Digital_Cuttlefish%2C_Vol._1
Posted by: Cuttlefish | December 11, 2008 6:28 PM
Here's mine. Can you guess what it's about?
Posted by: PEM | December 11, 2008 6:44 PM
Here is mine:
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/380033/Dissertation
Posted by: saxifraga | December 11, 2008 6:46 PM
It was next to impossible for me to remove references and citations without spending hours on this, but I kind of like how it turned out with the references in there. Especially the "et al" part.
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/380062/Dissertation
Well, it's no secret who I am now. :)
Posted by: Lynne | December 11, 2008 6:48 PM
I'm quite impressed that I managed to inspire a wordle craze..... Too bad I don't have a dissertation to wordle yet.... Hmmmmm....What could I wordle now?
Posted by: said student.... | December 11, 2008 6:56 PM
No dissertation yet, but here are both of my undergrad theses:
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/379541/Gender_determination_in_humans
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/380438/Senior_honors_thesis
Posted by: Emily | December 11, 2008 9:27 PM
Fun! Here is my masters thesis:
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/380478/Masters_Thesis
Posted by: LM | December 11, 2008 9:39 PM
OK, maybe less than anonymous (although my name doesn't appear in the wordle...), but what the heck... it was fun!
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/380766/Dissertation
Posted by: squawky | December 11, 2008 11:41 PM
You all work on such neat things. Here's our blog's front page as of right now: http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/380816/Sciencewomen
Posted by: ScienceWoman | December 12, 2008 12:21 AM
I don't have a dissertation yet but I wordled my recent review paper. It's beautiful! But I'm not posting it here since my specialty is so narrow that I'd give up my pseudonimity pretty quickly. I did print it out and now it grances the cover of my lab notebook. Yay!
Posted by: ambivalent academic | December 12, 2008 12:57 AM
This is too much fun! My M.S. Thesis wordled:
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/380785/MS_Thesis
Posted by: Joyce | December 12, 2008 12:58 AM
Ohhh, I could spend hours doing this!
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/381267/manuscript
My first first-author paper from post-doc lab
Posted by: Dr. Zeek | December 12, 2008 9:05 AM
These are so cool... more, more!
Posted by: Alice | December 12, 2008 10:28 AM
My dissertation is nearly 10 years old, and on another computer...but my most recent major writing project was a paper for my tenure portfolio: http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/381582/Love_All_Your_Neighbors
Posted by: JD | December 12, 2008 10:42 AM
This is really addicting! Here are both of my undergrad theses, since I don't have a dissertation yet:
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/379541/Gender_determination_in_humans
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/380438/Senior_honors_thesis
Posted by: Emily | December 12, 2008 9:20 PM
Found something to Wordle.... This is my semester :) http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/383829/A_Semester_in_Review
Posted by: student | December 13, 2008 12:03 AM
Fun! I just found your blog & you've already given me something to play with. No dissertation yet, but here's a paper on how to write undergrad lab reports ... I like how it picks out what's important!
www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/385332/What's_Important_in_a_Paper
and part of an introduction to a research proposal (almost creepy):
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/385336/EYES!
I love the suggestion a couple of comments up about putting these on lab notebooks ...
Posted by: C.C. | December 13, 2008 11:20 PM
hmm ... the first one didn't link ...
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/385332/What%27s_Important_in_a_Paper
Posted by: C.C. | December 13, 2008 11:23 PM
I can't stop!!!! I'm doing my annual reports for the last few years to see if the big words change any...
Posted by: Carlie | December 16, 2008 6:28 PM
The graduate students in my history and philosophy of engineering education course wordled their final concept map that was supposed to synthesize all the big ideas for the semester. The wordles are posted here: http://ene69500-005-fall2008.blogspot.com/2008/12/course-wordle.html.
Posted by: Alice | December 17, 2008 11:05 AM
It looks like there isn't a link to the graduate students wordles.
Posted by: Joyce | December 19, 2008 7:58 PM
Sorry, I think I've fixed it now.
Posted by: Alice | December 20, 2008 10:45 AM
Fun! My thesis is not on this machine, but here are a recent grant:
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/410646/Hippocampal_insulin_grant
and the first paper to come from it:
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/410650/insulin_memory_paper
- very cute! [I like how 'et' and 'al' show up so highly!]
Posted by: Ewan | December 28, 2008 8:24 PM
My physics dissertation.
Posted by: nurban | December 31, 2008 4:10 PM