Dean's World
 Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.

.:: Dean's World: Gender Genie ::.

August 30, 2003

Gender Genie

Well. Here's a web site called Gender Genie which claims to be able to identify your sex simply by analyzing a sample of your writing. Not your handwriting, but just based on the words and word patterns you use.

It, uh, didn't work very well for me. Either that or there's something I need to tell my wife...

(Via Lilac Rose.)

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I noticed her accuracy rate is about 50/50.

LOL!

Posted by Michael Demmons on August 30, 2003 at 8:49 AM


Yeah err, it thought I was female too...great program!

Posted by dowingba on August 30, 2003 at 9:13 AM


I gave it three different blog posts, and it read two correctly. Judging by most of the reports I've seen, a .667 streak seems to be extremely rare.

Posted by CGHill on August 30, 2003 at 9:32 AM


My husband I played with this awhile back. Our first attempts were reversed. As we went further back in our own blog history, we finally found posts that had the proper gender. Our hypothesis... He reads mostly girl blogs. I read mostly boy blogs. Our blogvoices have been affected. Possibly the model assumptions are wrong. Most likely it is just random fun.

Posted by punctilious on August 30, 2003 at 4:15 PM


It thinks I am female, too. Lol

Posted by Adam on August 30, 2003 at 5:43 PM


My theory: it's just a random number generator.

Posted by dowingba on August 31, 2003 at 1:01 AM


Actually, dowingba, if you check the site, you'll see that they claim to weight certain words. In my case, they guessed male correctly, due soley to the fact that I used the word "the" four times. :)

I don't know what happens when you click on the "you're wrong" icon, but when you click on the "you're right" icon, you'll get a running summary of results. Right now the status is:
guessed right: 33544 (50.05%)
guessed wrong: 33476 (49.95%)

After ~67,000 samples, I'd call that statistically equivalent to random chance. {grin}

Posted by Casey Tompkins on August 31, 2003 at 1:35 AM


The first time I was female. The second time I was male....I was actually impressed that it seemed so perfectly broken. After so many attempts, it's soo close to being wrong (or right) exactly half of the time.

Posted by Ed on August 31, 2003 at 2:42 AM


Well, I just submitted four more posts. Two said "female" and two said "male". It seems that the results are only right half the time, according to their own statistics.

Posted by susan b. on August 31, 2003 at 10:26 PM


Duurr...

Like I said before, guys, statistically equivalent to random chance. In other words, 50/50 odds of guessing correctly.

Posted by Casey Tompkins on September 01, 2003 at 12:38 AM


It seems to think I'm a male..hmmm.

Posted by Dawn on September 01, 2003 at 8:24 AM


50% Accuracy?? Please.

One of my submissions was categorized as male, the other female.

BTW, this has been driving me crazy. Can someone please tell me what LOL stands for. (Laugh-out-Loud perhaps)

Posted by Scott Harris on September 02, 2003 at 11:05 AM


I'll bet they would have a better accuracy rate if they just picked "male" all the time.

Posted by Scott Harris on September 02, 2003 at 11:12 AM


A couple of weeks ago I fed the Gender-Bender three blog entries and was told each time I was a woman. Then I ran it on an entry reading "I'm a man, you idiot!" and was told it couldn't decide what my sex was. I tried it again today and was told I was a man.

Posted by Xrlq on September 03, 2003 at 12:34 PM


It tot I was MALE..........wat will i tell my hubby next? lol

Posted by Sha on October 11, 2003 at 10:41 PM


 



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