[Online] This workshop introduces participants to the fundamentals of transforming textual information into numerical data, a crucial step in computational text analysis. We'll explore the processes that convert words into vectors (essentially row matrices, lists of numbers), enabling the comparison, clustering, and classification of text. Through hands-on exercises, we'll gain practical experience in vectorizing text and understanding how these numerical representations can catalyze new insights into linguistic patterns, themes, and relationships. No particular background in text analysis, programming, or mathematics is required.

Learning outcomes: Participants will develop a basic understanding of text vectorization and its applications in various text analysis methods.