Hey! I was obliquely cited on CNN.com!

Arranged marriage gets high-tech twist - CNN.com: "The rise of cell phones has made long-distance courtships easier. A small 2006 study from a University of Washington researcher found that young Indians living in Bangalore used cell phones to get to know partners introduced to them by their parents."

yeah, that's my research!

Dissertation statistics -- before handing off to grad school

Counts
83,193 words
456,047 characters
2,232 paragraphs
4,418 sentences

Averages
4.3 sentences per paragraph
17.8 words per sentence
5.2 characters per word

Readability
Passive sentences: 13%
Flesch reading ease: 36.7
Flesch-Kinkaid grade level: 12.4

309 references
343 pages (264 are content pages)
23 figures
8 appendices

Dissertation statistics (post-revision)

I have finished v2.0 of my dissertation. It is now shorter and more deductively organized.

Counts
82,138 words
449,442 characters
2,221 paragraphs
4,372 sentences

Averages
4.4 sentences per paragraph
17.8 words per sentence
5.2 characters per word

Readability
Passive sentences: 13%
Flesch reading ease: 37.1
Flesch-Kinkaid grade level: 12.3

308 references
341 pages (260 are content pages)
23 figures
8 appendices

Dissertation statistics (mid-revision)

Here is an update on my revision. I still need to revise two chapters. This count now includes my conclusions.

Counts
85,062 words
461,679 characters
2,227 paragraphs
4,504 sentences

Averages
4.6 sentences per paragraph
17.9 words per sentence
5.2 characters per word

Readability
Passive sentences: 13%
Flesch reading ease: 38.4
Flesch-Kinkaid grade level: 12.2

322 references
357 pages (275 are content pages)
33 figures
8 appendices

Comparing with what I started with, my writing (from a Flesch-Kinkaid perspective) seems to have become more difficult to read. However, it is still easier to read than the Harvard Law Review, though less easy to read than an insurance form. The dissertation has grown in size, but it has also shed some references suggesting that more interpretative or bracketing sentences have been put in. More paragraph breaks have been inserted, and each word has gotten beefier.

Dissertation statistics (pre-revision)

I'm starting to launch into deep revision for my dissertation draft.

Here are statistics for my dissertation pre-revision. This information includes my appendices, title page, bibliography, and graphics. It does not include my Conclusions chapter which would have been slightly bogus without going back and re-reading and re-thinking previous chapters.

[UPDATE: using Word's spell-check function to get additional information about readability.

Counts
82,561 words
444,473 characters
2,196 paragraphs
4,367 sentences

Averages
4.7 sentences per paragraph
17.9 words per sentence
5.1 characters per word

Readability
Passive sentences: 13%
Flesch reading ease: 39.8
Flesch-Kinkaid grade level: 12.0]

336 references
345 pages (262 are content pages)
83,396 words
448,146 characters (no spaces) implying my words are on average 5.37 letters long
2,279 paragraphs
33 figures
8 appendices

The internet is a friend of community

On Friday I went to a talk by Barry Wellman about "What is the internet doing to community?" This was a big talk that covered a lot of ground. The themes it touched included the so-called "death of community" or the bowling alone phenomenon (see Robert Putnam's work). Wellman and his team found that online ties were supplementing real life ties, and people were finding new ways to be close on the internet. Local ties still mattered, and households were becoming networked, e.g., people were functioning as a family unit even if they were not a nuclear family sitting under one roof. The networked household and domesticated internet is the dissertation topic of one of Wellman's grad students, Tracy Kennedy.

The notion of a distributed household is relevant to my own dissertation where my participants in Bangalore were part of a family even though they didn't live in the same house or the same city. Technology creates the umbrella that they all sit under.