closest_to: Return the n closest words in a VectorSpaceModel to a given...

In bmschmidt/wordVectors: Tools for creating and analyzing vector-space models of texts

Return the n closest words in a VectorSpaceModel to a given vector.

Description

This is a convenience wrapper around the most common use of 'cosineSimilarity'; the listing of several words similar to a given vector. Unlike cosineSimilarity, it returns a data.frame object instead of a matrix. cosineSimilarity is more powerful, because it can compare two matrices to each other; closest_to can only take a vector or vectorlike object as its second argument. But with (or without) the argument n=Inf, closest_to is often better for plugging directly into a plot.

As with cosineSimilarity, the second argument can take several forms. If it's a vector or matrix slice, it will be taken literally. If it's a character string, it will be interpreted as a word and the associated vector from 'matrix' will be used. If a formula, any strings in the formula will be converted to rows in the associated 'matrix' before any math happens.

Usage

closest_to(matrix, vector, n = 10, fancy_names = TRUE)

Arguments

matrix	A matrix or VectorSpaceModel
vector	A vector (or a string or a formula coercable to a vector) of the same length as the VectorSpaceModel. See below.
n	The number of closest words to include.
fancy_names	If true (the default) the data frame will have descriptive names like 'similarity to "king+queen-man"'; otherwise, just 'similarity.' The default can speed up interactive exploration.

Value

A sorted data.frame with columns for the words and their similarity to the target vector. (Or, if as_df==FALSE, a named vector of similarities.)

Examples

# Synonyms and similar words
closest_to(demo_vectors,demo_vectors[["good"]])

# If 'matrix' is a VectorSpaceModel object,
# you can also just enter a string directly, and
# it will be evaluated in the context of the passed matrix.

closest_to(demo_vectors,"good")

# You can also express more complicated formulas.

closest_to(demo_vectors,"good")

# Something close to the classic king:man::queen:woman;
# What's the equivalent word for a female teacher that "guy" is for
# a male one?

closest_to(demo_vectors,~ "guy" - "man" + "woman")

bmschmidt/wordVectors documentation built on June 2, 2022, 3:53 p.m.