Gender Prediction -- Can You Fool It?

**Lemur** · 12-28-2006, 15:39

I find this fascinating -- using an algorithm, this software predicts from samples of your writing whether you are male or female. I can fool it when I deliberately try to do so, but I can't trick it at all when I paste in chunks of text I wrote in letters or posts. Pretty slick. Give it a try!

Gender Writing Test

**Big_John** · 12-28-2006, 15:52

a 396-word passage from melville's Bartleby the Scrivener threw it.

edit: unless........

**Lemur** · 12-28-2006, 16:04

I would imagine that the software is "tuned" for modern English. Tossing in 19th-century prose (and Melville borders on the color purple -- the guy used what were considered anachronisms by the standards of his own time) will probably confuse it.

I think it's more fair to feed it your own writing, and see how it does.

**KukriKhan** · 12-28-2006, 16:08

Pasted in a small bit of frogbeastegg's MeadHall work. Verdict:

Words: 137

(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 204
Male Score: 101

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

Good Job!

But, pasting in my post from the frontroom beer thread, it got:

Words: 91

(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 83
Male Score: 60

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

In fairness, those pieces weren't long enough, probably.

Interesting division of Masculine v Feminine words they're using..

**Big_John** · 12-28-2006, 16:22

a 1500 word closed memo i wrote a couple months ago threw it also.

unless........

**Rodion Romanovich** · 12-28-2006, 16:39

Apparently Shakespeare (Hamlet) gets 1838 male points and 2666 female points, and Shakespeare is thereby officially a woman (wasn't there a conspiracy theory saying that Shakespeare's works were really written by a woman?

)!

**Sasaki Kojiro** · 12-28-2006, 17:04

Female Score: 647
Male Score: 817

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Nifty.

**Somebody Else** · 12-28-2006, 17:56

That speech I submitted in the Mead Hall a little while ago...

Female Score: 2154
Male Score: 2526

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Reassuring I suppose...

*edit*

Just stuck one of Cicero's speeches through the mill... apparently he's female. Not so reassuring, I was supposed to be mimicking his style!