In regards to fingerprints, everyone’s fingers leave behind a trace. It is a pattern that is unique to every specific person. It can incriminate someone very well if they commit a crime and anything they touch is left behind. It can be used to catch them and prosecute them for the crime and use it as evidence as mentioned in the last page. What I expect to see with this text mine is a lot more of use of the phrase “fingerprints”. I expect to see in the early 1900’s some use. Maybe because fingerprints where just being discovered and the use of them has only been in use for so a very recent amount of time. I still expect to see the traditional jump in the late 90’s and the early 2000’s. If there is a jump, it would most likely be attributed to the presence of more reliable scientific evidence and analysis of that evidence. This could be how the increase occurred if there is one. I will discuss what I came across.

Here are my results:

Figure 9. This is a screenshot taken by my MacBook Pro of the the Time Magazine Corpus Text Mine of “fingerprints”.

In 1920, there was a mention of ‘fingerprints’. This included 7,635,132 words in that and there are 1.96 hits per every million hits which is why there are 15 times that it was mentioned. It was increased the following year. In the 40’s, it decreased and in the 50’s it decreased even more. I could accredit that to the war that was going on in the world at that time. The magazine probably had more to talk about at this time. Most books were writing a little more liberally at this time. It increased the subsequent years in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. This may be because after the war. There was a little bit more things to talk about. In the 90’s, it a took a slight dive, but that increased in at the turn of the millennium.

My prediction was correct. It increases at the turn of the millennium. However, most of the time, the increase begins to happen in the 90’s at then continues in the 2000’s with a drastic jump. The other point is that the phrase ‘fingerprints’ could be used in any context. However, the next mine is very specific to the criminal justice system. 

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