What this shows

• Compare poem or verse similarities across the Finnic runosong corpus (292,092 poems, 4.36M verses) using multiple algorithms.
• Two modes: Poem Similarity compares entire poems; Verse Similarity compares individual verse lines.

Similarity algorithms

• TF-IDF Lemma (green headers): Groups word forms by lemma (dictionary form), then measures cosine distance. Rarer shared lemmas contribute more than common ones. Works within one language.
• Jaccard Wordform (blue headers): Compares exact word forms via set intersection (|A∩B| / |A∪B|). Stricter than TF-IDF because morphological variants don't match.
• Translation-Pivot (teal headers): Maps verses through their English translations, enabling cross-lingual Estonian↔Finnish matches. A verse in Estonian and a verse in Finnish can match if they share translated meanings.
• Alignment (indigo headers): Aligns the verse sequences of two poems using character n-gram similarity and dynamic programming (Wagner-Fischer algorithm). From the FILTER project. Captures structural similarity — poems that follow the same verse order score high even if individual words differ.
• Verse Match (purple headers): Runs four verse-level algorithms (TF-IDF, Jaccard, Translation, CharBigram) on individual verse pairs, then aggregates to poem level via RRF. Captures fine-grained verse-by-verse similarity.
• RRF (Reciprocal Rank Fusion): Combines TF-IDF, Jaccard, Translation, and Alignment at poem level. If a match ranks high in multiple algorithms, its combined score is boosted. Shown as a percentage (0-100%).

Poem mode

• Search by archive reference (e.g., "H II 1, 389") to load a poem and see its most similar poems.
• Two-column comparison: pick any two of six algorithms to view side-by-side. Each column shows the top 50 most similar poems. Or use Combined (RRF) for a single fused ranking.
• Score threshold slider filters out weak matches. Cross-lingual filter (on Translation, Alignment) limits to Estonian↔Finnish matches.
• Click a poem ID to chain-navigate (load that poem's similarities). Breadcrumbs track your exploration path.
• Shared items show what the poems have in common: lemmas (TF-IDF), wordforms (Jaccard), translations (Translation-pivot), or aligned verse pairs (Alignment).

Verse mode

• Search for a poem, then click any verse line to see its similar verses across the corpus.
• Four algorithm columns (TF-IDF, Jaccard, Translation-pivot, CharBigram) show the top verse matches each, plus an RRF combined view.
• Cross-lingual badge (ET↔FI) appears when a translation-pivot match crosses the language boundary.
• Click verse IDs to navigate to that verse in the Poem Reader.

Formula clusters

• In verse mode, the sidebar shows the top 200 formulaic verse clusters discovered across the corpus.
• A formula cluster groups verses that are nearly identical across many poems (high-frequency recurring lines).
• Click a cluster to load its representative verse and explore its similar verses.

Geography tab — Network View

• Shows a map of the strongest place-to-place connections based on verse-level similarity across the entire corpus.
• Each line connects two places that share similar verse pairs. Line thickness and opacity reflect connection strength (number of shared verse pairs).
• Green lines = same-language connections (ET↔ET or FI↔FI). Gold lines = cross-lingual connections (ET↔FI).
• Circle size reflects how many verse-pair connections involve that place.
• Click a line to see the top matching verse pairs with links to the Poem Reader.
• Use "Cross-lingual only" to see only Estonian↔Finnish geographic bridges (uses a dedicated cross-lingual index of 5,000 connections).
• Data: 243,118 unique place connections from 59.4M verse-pair matches across 4 algorithms (Jaccard, TF-IDF, Translation, CharBigram).

Geography tab — Place Focus

• Select a specific place to see its connections radiate outward on the map. Search by name using the autocomplete dropdown.
• Circle size at connected places reflects connection strength using the selected metric.
• Each place shows its top 50 connections (by strength) plus top 10 cross-lingual connections separately.
• Click a connection line for details: verse pair count, strength score, surprise score, and top matching verse pairs with Poem Reader links.
• Click "Focus on this place" in a marker popup to chain-navigate (explore from that place). Use the browser back button to return.

Place Focus metrics

• Tradition Strength: For each pair of places, sums the best similarity score (across 4 algorithms) for every unique verse pair between them. Rewards both quantity (many shared verses) and quality (high-scoring matches). Larger circles = more high-quality shared poetic material. Naturally highlights neighboring places with extensive shared traditions.
• Surprising Connections: Normalizes the tradition strength by the geometric mean of both places' verse counts: strength / √(verses_A × verses_B). This controls for corpus size — a small place sharing many strong verse pairs with a distant place scores higher than two large neighboring places sharing the same number. Highlights unexpected long-range and cross-lingual connections. Warning: unreliable for places with fewer than 200 verses.

Interactions

• Click poem/verse IDs to chain-navigate (explore from that poem/verse).
• Click "explore" links to view a poem in the standalone Similarity Explorer or Poem Reader.
• Breadcrumbs at the top track your navigation history. Click any breadcrumb to go back.
• Use the URL parameters ?poem=ID or ?verse=ID for deep linking.
• Geography deep links: ?mode=geography&submode=placefocus&place=Kuusalu&viz=tradition