Spinning the Canadian Prime Minister election
An Ontario researcher has mathematically ranked the three top prime minister candidates according to the amount of spin in their speeches. Queens University Professor David Skillicorn is a specialist in data mining. He applied a complex text analysis to numerous speeches by Incumbent Prime Minister Paul Martin, Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper and New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton. According to the analysis, which looks at subtle language clues, Martin's speeches reveal the largest gap between what he says and what he believes.
The computer analysis he used is based on a model developed by University of Texas at Austin researcher James Pennebaker.
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