President Obama’s speech is still live on television but thanks to a scoop we can analyze his entire message using our old favorite tool, Wordle.

Can you tease out the major themes?

America, poeple, government, business, work, children, future….

Thanks to a quick analysis with tools from Rainbow Arch we can also get some quick frequency counts of the 6,950 words spoken (1,647 unique).

Connecting words obviously come up at the top.

1. The: 349
2. And: 235
3. To: 215
4. Of: 196
5. We: 185

Top meaningful words (my discretion)…

1. People: 33
2. America: 26
3. Jobs: 25
4. Work: 21
5. American:19

Amazing how quickly you can analyze a speech that hasn’t even ended yet!

Update: The NY Times has a neat look at buzz words used in State of the Union speeches from FDR to Obama
Update II: Word clouds seem to be a popular data visualization technique tonight.  Check out this from CBC News Canada