4 ms·

You are forgetting that the individual might consider the gender to be private information. Some people might want to use a different gender in different contex

• mseebach 13y ago
  An individual that considers gender to be private information , and that uses different genders in different situations is very unlikely to be using a name that can be classified with a high degree of confidence as one gender. A person using the name "Jack" is unlikely to be assumed to be a woman, even if that person selected "female" from a drop down somewhere. If the same person uses Jack/M and Cindy/F in different contexts, no fuzzy algorithm is going to resolve them as the same person (bar some other, stronger ID, such as a SSN). EDIT: I initially used "William" as an example. Ironically, it turns out that name is only 57.6% male. Both Jack and Cindy are 90% male/female.
  • drakeandrews 13y ago
    At least in the UK, Jack is a fairly common shortening of Jacqueline. The only way of determining a users gender is asking them directly, and if a person wishes to enter different values into different systems, all the more power to them.
  • dsr_ 13y ago
    "I initially used "William" as an example. Ironically, it turns out that name is only 57.6% male. Both Jack and Cindy are 90% male/female." You have just used the numbers from the API as evidence of its own accuracy.