#10 I+
The word “data” occurs 50 times in Project Hail Mary (not counting “database”).
Half the occurrences are in the first six chapters, with 18 occurrences just in Chapters 5 and 6.
In the Earth sections, the word is used 19 times: 4 times by Grace as narrator; once or twice by each of Dr. Browne, Grace in direct speech, Marissa, Sandra Elias, Steve Hatch, and Theodore Canton. Stratt uses it 7 times.
In the Space sections, the word is used 31 times: 28 times by Grace as narrator; once by Grace in direct speech and twice by Rocky.
Here’s a visualization of the relative frequencies across all sections and chapters of the book. Even though Chapters 5 and 6 mention “data” more than Chapters 1 and 2, the mentions are in shorter sections in the former chapters and so “data” makes up a greater proportion of the words in those sections.
Each coloured bar represents a section and is colour-coded for Earth sections (green) and Space sections (purple).
The grey bars represent the chapters, which are marked with ticks and numbers.
The y-axis is the relative frequency, i.e. the proportion of tokens in that section (or chapter) that match “data” (so a bar might be higher, even with fewer occurrences, if the section or chapter is shorter).
Data on top of data with data in between.
06.140