Gov. Steve Bullock’s State of the State visualized

A word cloud is text data visualized. The above word cloud was generated from the written prepared text of Gov. Steve Bullock’s first State of the State address.

Bullock, who was elected in November, called on lawmakers to work with him to “invest in education,” “create better jobs” in order to “attract businesses” to invest in Montana.

I think word clouds are kinda nifty because they give readers an opportunity to visualize the main points, or themes, of large volumes of text. In this case, Gov. Bullock’s speech.

As you can see in short section cut-and-pasted from Bullock’s prepared speech, the word cloud does a good job highlighting Gov. Bullock’s stated priorities:

Members of the 63^rd Legislature, I ask you to join me.  What I ask of you tonight is simple and straightforward: 

First, be responsible with our budget, because I won’t allow you to spend more than we take in or make cuts that undermine our long-term stability.

Second, join me in focusing on creating jobs, investing in education, and making government more effective; and

Lastly, act in a manner that we’re not ashamed to have our children watching… because they are.

I am taking these principles to heart, and we’ve hit the ground running to create better jobs, better schools and a more effective government.

Mouse over the word cloud below to see larger versions of the words. Play around with it. What do you notice? What trends or themes pop out to you?