Ever wondered whether a poster was male or female?

ColinM

Often when you read a post, you make an assumption that the author is either male or female. Often you can be wrong though.

There is an algorithm that claims an 80% success rate in determining the gender of the author of a piece of text. It analyses it for the arrangement of certain keywords, and based on the count of "masculine" and "feminine" words, it makes a guess as to whether the author is male or female. The greater the amount of text, the better it works.

From the website's stats, the 80% claim seems to verified. I have experimented with it myself, and I have found it to be correct about 4 out of 5 times.

Try it out yourself by pasting a lengthy enough (5+ lines of text) post or mail or something that you have written to see if it guesses your gender correctly. Please submit a vote on this thread to count the number of good and bad guesses as an experiment to see if the results correlate.

The Gender Genie: http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.html

Karl Hungus

Er... You're...
You're a bloke... eh... Right?

ColinM

Nah, I'm a transexual. It's great, cos it really stumps the genie.

kamobe

Hmmmmm

Seems to think I'm a girl. Stupid test.

ColinM

Maybe you're just in denial, or in the closet or some such.

elexes

me and a few others used to think AngelWhore was a girl then we rang about getting one of the lads at galwaylan a place to stay and got the shock of r lives

Nevyn

Female Score: 82
Male Score: 215

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

---

hah , tried 5 differnt peices of mine and all the same answer .

now should I laugh or not

patch

Of course if the genie could see avatars it would get a better idea.

bugler

It thought I was female. I wrote a few passages of fiction, in which the only character was female...seems this really set in stone the result. Simplified version indeed.

andrew163

lol...it thinks im a woman..... :rolleyes:

Pigman II

Just out of interest I did some experimentation :

SPECIMEN
========
Does this make me look fat? That's not how I wanted it done! If you ever come home like that again.....! Where have you been? Don't be funny with me mister!

RESULTS
=====
Female Score: 169
Male Score: 6

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

==========

Well, who'd have guessed?

amp

Ha! Put some erotic fiction threw it and it thought I was a man! hahahaha

Oh wai

richindub2

Female Score: 658
Male Score: 298
on one of my PMs

Female Score: 1313
Male Score: 592
on a long humanities style post by me

Female Score: 539
Male Score: 505
on a school essay


...seems rather pants to me

Sangre

.....Wait.....
Rich isn't a gurl??

*boggle*

DMT

Originally posted by amp
Ha! Put some erotic fiction threw it and it thought I was a man! hahahaha

You've written erotic fiction? Does Mark know about this???
Liinkage??

tman

Female Score: 82
Male Score: 86

:eek:
that was a bit too close for comfort.

/me cracks open a beer & does some more manly stuff, rar

dudara

i submitted an e-mail I'd written describing a meeting with an ex-supervisor of mine. Apparently I'm male. Better tell my breasts that..

Raz

Female Score: 966
Male Score: 894

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

Apparently a guy can't write something compassionate.
The words 'but' and 'like' screwed me up. I used each 4 times for a collective score of 344 in a post almost 500 words.

GuanYin

Hrmm it was close, but apparently a bit of text I wrote on drug delivery is feminine!

dod

Hmm.

Purely for the fun of it, I submitted the text of a few of my more verbose posts to the genie.

Mass: I am Female (F/M 1381/1193)
Kamikaze Pram Pilots: I am Male (F/M 1294/1693)
Letter to the ODCA: I am Male (F/M 502/512)
The Girl on the Dart: I am Male (F/M 724/ 857)
The Intruders Shadow: I am Male(F/M 383/610)
Architectural Abominations: I am Male (F/M 798/1318)
A world of Advertising: I am Male (F/M 763/840)
The Blind Date that wasn't mine: I am Female (F/M 1122/921)


From this sample, I am deemed by a vote of 6 to 2 to be Male. Seems fair enough.

doctor evil

Says I`m female, meh suppose I am.ww)

rainbow kirby

Damn genie. using my livejournal posts it thinks im male

GuanYin

Its probably your new username, its much more manly than man u babe.

Paddy20

Well, I typed in 83 words. Here is the Result:-

Female Score: 130
Male Score: 362

The gender genie thinks the author of this passage is : Male

The damn genie is correct.

Computers take over the world ?..

P.

passive

posted an old diary of mine...

Female Score: 1605
Male Score: 1615

barely right, but right nonetheless....male

littleninja

Female Score: 363
Male Score: 155

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

ok there it is ppl PROOF that littleninja is indeed female!!! if that thing is based on the way ppl write stuff as being feminine or not how comes ppl have always thought that I was male???

But LUCKILY thanks to the test it has been confirmed that I'm female *checks*(.... JUST to make sure ya understand ) uh huh yup defo female :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Gordon

"Original: Hello, I am a person living in this world. I know that the cunning creators are reading what I am writing right now and would honestly tell to them that I am male. I wonder if this computer thing will work and tell me that I am indeed. If it does not I will be forced to wear girly dresses and pink ribbons. Hmmm, I've just had a thought... sounds kinky actually. Bring it on!"

Female 217
Male 198

The Sweeper

...Interesting...

I like the way 'something' is a male word, and 'everything' is a female word... I also like it that 'actually' is a female word... hee hee

Gender genie sez I a man.

simu

Female Score: 879
Male Score: 1154

Wrong!!!

I tried it with a long humanities post that I was sure sounded more female than male!

This algorithm isn't great in the first place and the fact, for example, that words such as "myself" tend to be used more in Irish English than US English would also skew the results a bit.

Big Chief

tryed a couple of things i have written, first one =

Words: 906

Female Score: 1487
Male Score: 2178

second

Words: 1405

Female Score: 2446
Male Score: 2894

worked i guess

Silverfish

Female Score: 1516
Male Score: 1571

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


Stupid Genie.

Bard

Typed in the following (just made it up as I went along) and got female score of 229 and male score of 184.

She rushed to the top of the stairs. Unknown to her, he was rushing up at the same time. He hit the 3rd stair from the top. Their eyes met and the tension in the air was suddenly ramped up by a few notches. "Stop right there!", he yelled, "you're under arrest, bitch!". "Not likely", she said, as she unexpectedly jumped out the nearest window. This was, of course, the last thing he needed.

Struggling on her way down, she finally got her mini-paraglider opened and flicked open her make-up case. The descent would give her a chance to pretty herself up a bit. Noticing that the descent would also give her a chance to pick off a few men below, she pulld out her Steyr rifle from her backpack. Death from the sky in a stunning female form, she slowed her descent and steadied her aim. Below her, something exploded with a sudden ferociousness.

I'm a guy by the way...

lili

me think it's easy to reconize the gender of a poster.

ColinM

Originally posted by lili
me think it's easy to reconize the gender of a poster.

What methods do you use to tell?

Victor

Haha it's wrong, then agin I used a PI post.

Female Score: 1505
Male Score: 1476

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

Victor

I tried this with The Corinthian - it appears he's a woman, or maybe not, depending on post.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?postid=1107836#post1107836

And Wicknight is male:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?postid=1104535#post1104535

TomTom

I suppmitted a few of my own posts.

The ones i was giving out in it thought i was female and the others i was male.

lili

Originally posted by ColinM
What methods do you use to tell?

no particulary methods, it's a question of feeling. on some subjects you can guess by the reaction whom you are talking.

The Beer Baron

I'm late to this post I think, but still- very interesting.
I took a random number of things that I wrote (short stories long-since put up on the internet- mostly sci-fi and fantasy stuff) and out of all the ones I tested it came up right- male. (Otherwise I'd be the WKD or Smirnoff Ice Baron now wouldn't I?)

The only one that failed the test was one piece I wrote with a female protagonist. Granted the actual piece was horror-styled SF, quite gory in places, eerie and brim-full of made-up geek jargon. Yet it still managed to see me as female. This, of course, delighted me as I had tried desperatly to make the character both graceful and fragile, yet strong at the same time. (As a real lady is)

Now I'll be honest and say I found the mechanics somewhat spurious, and the psychology of it, well, it generalises too much- like psychology in general (hehe)
Seriously tho- I think it's a bit like one of those guess the numbers magic tricks. But I was just delighted about that.

As for

it's easy to reconize the gender of a poster.

I'll generalise once again and say, yes language is one thing.
Also, females tend to take a more objective view in discussions and favour the human or empathic side of them. Men tend to bitch and moan and argue over trivial things (I'll be the 1st to admit it)

Men getting angry for no reason.
Women when they feel they have been insulted.

My experiences.
But once again, how should I know?

lili

i think you got it, it's exactly that:)

AL][EN

out of 3 of my posts it guessed correctly everytime

however when i just typed in random sentences it guessed incorrectly all 3 times!! weird that

BEAT

Female Score: 42
Male Score: 131

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


:rolleyes: How did I know it would be wrong :rolleyes:

Mossy Monk

score: 4-1 in favour of male posts

result: it was right

The Beer Baron

Of course the gender of the programmer wouldn't have any influence on it either- would it?:rolleyes:

ColinM

Good point, BB.