6 ms·

See also: http://genderanalyzer.com/ http://genderanalyzer.com/

patio11 17y ago
Unlike personality classifications (which are essentially witchcraft with better marketing), gender is objectively verifiable (yeah yeah gender studies students, I passed the class too, thanks for your comment) and so makes for a much more productive area of research. Trivial algorithms (~60 lines of awk last time I did it) are very capable of pegging gender with 80%+ accuracy for some corpora. See generally: http://u.cs.biu.ac.il/~koppel/papers/male-female-text-final.pdf http://u.cs.biu.ac.il/~koppel/papers/male-female-text-final....
- dkimball 17y ago
  You're speaking of "sex," not "gender" -- the former is biological and there are two of them; the latter is cultural or social and there could be arbitrarily many. I say this while being a conservative; the semantic distinction is a useful one, although attempting to blur the distinction between a (biological) sex and a (cultural) gender never does any good.
  - youngian 17y ago
    Why couldn't patio11 be speaking of gender? In fact, I think a study measuring gender would identify with even more accuracy, although data collection would be harder (you would need the authors to report how they identified). Anyways, the linked study uses the word "gender" - it's probably conflating the two, as often happens.
    - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
      ... because he said that it is objectively verifiable
      - youngian 17y ago
        Which gender is. Your gender is how you identify, so unless you are lying to a researcher who asks you what gender you identify as, it's objectively verifiable.
  - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
    there are intersex biologies to account for if you want to be very precise
smokinn 17y ago
It was 79% sure my blog was written by a man but it was 74% sure my girlfriend's blog was written by a man as well. I'm not impressed.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- dkarl 17y ago
  It's 57% sure http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/ http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/ is written by a woman, too.
- orangecat 17y ago
  You need a larger sample size before being impressed or unimpressed. If it's 74% sure of something, it should be wrong a quarter of the time; if not, its confidence estimate was too low.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

Unlike personality classifications (which are essentially witchcraft with better marketing), gender is objectively verifiable (yeah yeah gender studies students, I passed the class too, thanks for your comment) and so makes for a much more productive area of research. Trivial algorithms (~60 lines of awk last time I did it) are very capable of pegging gender with 80%+ accuracy for some corpora. See generally: http://u.cs.biu.ac.il/~koppel/papers/male-female-text-final.pdf http://u.cs.biu.ac.il/~koppel/papers/male-female-text-final....

dkimball 17y ago
You're speaking of "sex," not "gender" -- the former is biological and there are two of them; the latter is cultural or social and there could be arbitrarily many. I say this while being a conservative; the semantic distinction is a useful one, although attempting to blur the distinction between a (biological) sex and a (cultural) gender never does any good.
- youngian 17y ago
  Why couldn't patio11 be speaking of gender? In fact, I think a study measuring gender would identify with even more accuracy, although data collection would be harder (you would need the authors to report how they identified). Anyways, the linked study uses the word "gender" - it's probably conflating the two, as often happens.
  - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
    ... because he said that it is objectively verifiable
    - youngian 17y ago
      Which gender is. Your gender is how you identify, so unless you are lying to a researcher who asks you what gender you identify as, it's objectively verifiable.
- aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  there are intersex biologies to account for if you want to be very precise

smokinn 17y ago

It was 79% sure my blog was written by a man but it was 74% sure my girlfriend's blog was written by a man as well. I'm not impressed.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
dkarl 17y ago
It's 57% sure http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/ http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/ is written by a woman, too.
orangecat 17y ago
You need a larger sample size before being impressed or unimpressed. If it's 74% sure of something, it should be wrong a quarter of the time; if not, its confidence estimate was too low.
deleted 17y ago
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