The Gender Genie

[randomness]

http://bookblog.net/gender/analysis.php says:

Inspired by an article and a test in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Read more at BookBlog, The New York Times, and The Guardian.

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

I just tried it on my two most recent posts with more than 500 words:

The first one (private):

Words: 536
Female Score: 824
Male Score: 565
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!


The second one:

Words: 646
Female Score: 1133
Male Score: 1044
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

I blog like a girl. Oh, the shock.

There are different settings for fiction, non-fiction, and blog posts.

(from http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2007/04/do_i_blog_like_a_girl.php)

Comments

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

I blog and dissertate like a man! I was close to the line between masculine and feminine on both, but the blog entry and the dissertation excerpt that I submitted came up as male. I would not have expected that at all!

[tla]

I always peg those things as male. Of course, I peg a substantial fraction of personality tests (the ones that try to draw male/female distinctions) as male, too.

[gee-tar.livejournal.com]

Oddly, my recent entry on "beauty" was tagged as masculine, while my recent entry on "strategic analysis" was tagged as feminine.

I think the results tell us more about the shortcomings of the algorithm than providing us with any deep insight into our writing style.

[muffyjo]

Hmm...so I tried it on this post:
http://muffyjo.livejournal.com/293392.html#cutid1
and it came up with the following:
Words: 786
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 603
Male Score: 1136

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

Hmmm...So next I tried this entry:
http://muffyjo.livejournal.com/292558.html
Words: 235
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 301
Male Score: 191

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

So the shorter I write, the more feminine....

[holmes-iv.livejournal.com]

I saw a very interesting comment about this widget in an interview with Lois McMaster Bujold—apparently, it hadn't a clue about her (fifty-fifty on all the passages she tried), but it correctly identified the gender of the point-of-view character of every single passage she put into it. Which is kind of cool, when you think about it. :-)

[choirsoftheeye.livejournal.com]

I went through a series of posts, including some from a private journal, and the results were overwhelming feminine, with the exception of one self-analysis post. I got 2-3x as much on the feminine side a few times. Woah.

[cmat.livejournal.com]

I blog like a girl. Oh, the shock.

I did about 15 posts and got a near-perfect 50/50 split. Guessing 50/50 male/female is not so hard! :-)

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

I apparently life-blog like a woman, but rant-blog like a man.