Analysis of Trump's State of the Union Speech, with R

President Trump's State of the Union speech was last night, and it seemed to me it dragged on a bit. That's because it was apparently the slowest SOTU speech in history, based on average number of words spoken per minute. The chart below, based on these data, was created by Josh Katz. (The R code for the chart is here. Note the use of his needs package to load the required R packages.)

Peter Aldhous at Buzzfeed analyzed last night's State of the Union speech as well. Not only was the speech delivered slowly, the script was at a 9-year-old's reading level, following a long-term decline in the complexity of State of the Union speeches.

You can find more analysis of this and past SOTU speeches at the link below. The R code behind the analysis can be found here. (You may also want to check out this analysis of Trump's Twitter activity and the associated R code.)

Buzzfeed: “I Have The Best Words.” How Trump’s First SOTU Compares To All The Others.

 

Comments

[Taylor]

Can you guys stop with the political sh*t all the time, thanks. I like coming here to read the posts but am sick of the buzzfeed tier nonsense. Go make charts for buzzfeed if you guys want to be push an angle all the time.

[Tommy]

+ 1 Taylor

[Jason]

I'm curious how showing an obvious historical decline in State of the Union speeches, regardless of party, "pushes an angle". Please explain.

[A Dewees]

Perhaps you're also skeptical of research by a "Mexican" researcher.

[DWSWesVirginny]

I agree with the previous respondent, Taylor. This is just another way, using R, to show that Trump is a moron; a so annoyingly obvious media trope that if the authors of these doubtful analyses do not see it, it is because they are, to use another cliche, blinded by science.. But I doubt that is the case.

I am, fact glad for this posting because to the scientist truly trying to be unbiased it should serve as a cautionary example that one's prejudices can subtly and not-so-subtly affect one's statistics and the conclusions derived from them.

In statistics and data analysis, perhaps in more than any other quantitative subject, a given result should be independently studied by a broad range of individuals hosting a spectrum of opinions--especially in those areas touching on politics. In the present example, I am sure Trump supporters would be able to show a historical rise in the State of the Union speeches since he took office.

As a starting point, I challenge readers to combine a little history with their R and take a look at Soviet production figures from almost any decade of its existence and ask themselves, in light of the fact that the economists and statisticians who ginned them up were smart and sometimes of international renown, were not "pushing an angle."