Data Mining the Bible

WIRED SCIENCE

March 8, 2011



"Bible Social Network"

NEW YORK--The computer age triggered a seemingly endless stream of scientific data, but such incoming mountains of information come at a cost. The more data you amass, the tougher it is to comprehend what you're dealing with. In a push for better perspective, a group of information scientists in 2005 created a decade-long competitive art exhibit called Places & Spaces: Mapping Science. The exhibit's advisory board follows a theme and some core criteria to pick 10 winners each year. This year's winning entries for the theme "science maps as visual interfaces to digital libraries" were announced this week. Exhibit-ready versions of the maps are scheduled for display in mid-June. Using a customized Java program, a duo of information scientists extracted as much data as they could from the Bible to create this winning entry. The graphic above depicts a "social network" made of 2,619 people and places mentioned in the book. Below, the cross-references (colored arcs) are mapped to verses in chapters (gray bars). [link]