Information Approach to Co-occurrence of Words in Written
Language
Damián G. Hernández
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Centro Atómico Bariloche and Instituto Balseiro
8400 Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina
Abstract
In this paper we study the distribution of words across the different parts of a book using tools from information theory. In particular, the mutual information between words in the text and parts of the text is compared with the mutual information of a shuffled version of the book. This analysis allows us to extract not only relevant words of the text but also relationships between the different words, such as co-occurrence and repulsion between them. With the connections due to co-occurrence of words, we show how to construct a network that reflects the semantic organization of the book. This method can be applied to other types of sequences, measuring the relations between the different symbols that compose such sequences.
