In “Phrases that Signal Workplace Hierarchy,” Eric Gilbert at Georgia Tech
University, dissected that database for science. Enron’s organizational
chart was also a matter of public record, as were the job titles of over
100 of its employees (compiled into a dataset from trial records by
researchers at John’s Hopkins and USC). By linking this information,
Gilbert’s team was able to label thousands of emails as traveling up, down,
or sideways in the company hierarchy, and analyze them for patterns.

For their analysis, they broke the text of the emails down into *unigrams*
(single words), *bigrams* (two-word phrases), and *trigrams* (three-word
phrases). Then they stripped out the phrases that consisted only of
stop-words (“at”, “it”, “the”, etc.), and the phrases that were
industry/company specific (“gas markets”), *and* the phrases that were only
used fewer than 10 times, or in emails sent by fewer than three people
(partially to eliminate personal “catchphrases” -- like Lumbergh’s “Mmm,
yeah,” and, “That’d be great, thanks.”)

http://bit.ly/1Nw4ZBR
http://bit.ly/1Nw4ZBR+


-- 
Peterk
Dallas, Tx
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"The problems of our economy have occurred not as an outgrowth of
laissez-faire, unbridled competition.
They have occurred under the guidance of federal agencies, and under the
umbrella of federal regulations."
Senator Ted Kennedy, in defending trucking deregulation in 1978.

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