Sunday, May 06, 2007

On A (Gender) Bender

Apparently, I write like a woman.

No, really.

This program, the Gender Genie, analyzes writings for their masculinity/femininity based on the words used. Based on the ~16 words devoted to each gender, it decides which way you swing based on the majority.

Interestingly, I'm a feminine writer when I write about philosophy or religion. When I write about video games and porn? I'm all man, it seems.

Personally, I think it's a skewed system. Even average Joe Schmoe writers like me know that certain words are best used in certain contexts. You'd think more content specific clues would be the determining factors, but it's rather innocuous words. Here's the lists:

Female
With, If, Not, Where, Be, When, Your, Her, We, Should, She, And, Me, Myself, Her, Was
Male
Around, More, What, Are, As, Who, Below, Is, These, The, A, At, It, Many, Said, Above, To
See what I mean? I could easily construct a very "feminine" sentence that in context is 100% all man, and vice versa. I think the system stinks.

Incidentally, this post clocks in as male. Good to know.

Update
Oh, I should probably offer my hat tip on this one to Shamus.

I'm a rude blogger sometimes. Good thing no one reads this mess.

Update #2
A big welcome to Shamus' readers! I hope you'll take a moment to look around. A big thank you to Shamus for the link (I guess that shows what courteous blogging will do for you).

2 comments:

Unknown said...

This explains quite a lot sir.
Yet, I love you regardless.

p.s. I am not surprised. jk

Anonymous said...

The system is indeed flawed, although even an 80% success rate indicates that they are onto something. Having said that, a rough audit of the feedback makes it look like the program is falling short of 80%.

If the success rate falls to within a few points of 50%, then we could conclud the whole thing is pure random gibberish.