Boredom, Depression, Tedium, Melancholia - History of a word at the SPL
MAT 259, 2019
Yichen Li
Concept
Feeling of boredom or meaninglessness is a major symptom of depression. Use of the English word "boredom" is preceded by certain words expressing similar concepts. Historically, the concept of "boredom" as introduced into English could be found in words "acedia", "ennui", "melancholia", and "tedium".
This visualization demonstrates the checkout behavior and keep duration of items containing variations of words "depression", "melancholia", "boredom", and "tedium" ("acedia" and "ennui" were omitted for neatness of color scheme and to avoid overcrowding, these two were chosen because of their obscurity as introduced words).
Checkout of items associated each word are color coded and visualized by vertically repeating 4 different characters. It is hypothesized that items related to "depression" have more frequent check-out, therefore, I chose the "|" character for depression to provide a grid for the visualization.
This visualization demonstrates the checkout behavior and keep duration of items containing variations of words "depression", "melancholia", "boredom", and "tedium" ("acedia" and "ennui" were omitted for neatness of color scheme and to avoid overcrowding, these two were chosen because of their obscurity as introduced words).
Checkout of items associated each word are color coded and visualized by vertically repeating 4 different characters. It is hypothesized that items related to "depression" have more frequent check-out, therefore, I chose the "|" character for depression to provide a grid for the visualization.
Query
SELECT
title,
(title LIKE '%depression%'
AND title NOT LIKE '%great depression%'
AND title NOT LIKE '%new deal%') AS depression,
(title LIKE '%melanchol%') AS melancholia,
(title LIKE '%boredom%') AS boredom,
(title LIKE '%tedium%') AS tedium,
-- (title LIKE '%ennui%') AS ennui
MONTH(cout),
DAY(cout),
HOUR(cout),
MONTH(cin),
DAY(cin),
HOUR(cin)
FROM
spl_2016.inraw
WHERE
DATE(cout) BETWEEN '2016-01-01' AND '2016-12-31'
AND(HOUR(cout) BETWEEN 10 and 20)
AND (-- title LIKE '%schizophrenia%'
-- OR title LIKE '%bipolar%'
(title LIKE '%depression%'
AND title NOT LIKE '%great depression%'
AND title NOT LIKE '%new deal%')
OR title LIKE '%melanchol%'
OR title LIKE '%boredom%'
OR title LIKE '%tedium%'
-- OR title LIKE '%ennui%'
)
GROUP BY title , MONTH(cout), DAY(cout),HOUR(cout),MONTH(cin),DAY(cin),HOUR(cin)
ORDER BY MONTH(cout) ASC,DAY(cout) ASC
Process
The checkout instances are overcrowded in these earlier versions. However, the colored one actually shows more comparison among checkouts of titles involving these key words
Final result
Only one year (2016) is chosen to avoid over crowding of the characters. The vertical axis is checkout month (denotes by number of dashes for aesthetic purpose), the horizontal axis is checkout day (in the month). The day numbers (1-31) also determine vertical value, since we don't experience time in jumps of months and it would be easier that way to visualize checkout keep time. Each "|" should be 5 days.
A red-colored axis system (with mouse position as origin) is used to navigate titles and checkout times located on the right. The titles are partially cut out.
Ideally, color schemes could be switched between RGB and CMYK primary colors, it is not functional, here, I have included screenshots from manually changing fill colors.
A red-colored axis system (with mouse position as origin) is used to navigate titles and checkout times located on the right. The titles are partially cut out.
Ideally, color schemes could be switched between RGB and CMYK primary colors, it is not functional, here, I have included screenshots from manually changing fill colors.
Code