This visualization shows part of the Dr Seuss story Green Eggs and Ham. The visualization technique is a recurrence plot, which represents each word of the text as a square running diagonally down the page. When a word is repeated in the text, a square is drawn where lines from the pair of points would meet. You can see the word a square represents by keeping your mouse still above the square for 1 or 2 seconds. A diagonal row of points shows a repeated sequence of words. The closer to the diagonal points appear, the more recently they were repeated. A recurrence plot shows the overall frequency of repetition, but also shows where in the text repetition occurs.
To see a recurrence plot of Sylvia Plath's poem Mad Girl's Love Song, click here.
To see a recurrence plot (with annotations) of Dylan Thomas' poem Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, click here.
Recurrence plots could also be applied to show repetition at the syllable or phoneme level (if the data is transcribed appropriately) or at the phrase or concept level (if an appropriate definition of ‘match’ is identified).