Wednesday, January 26, 2005

"That is one butch chick."

Luke linked today to The Gender Genie, which purports to be able to tell your sex (gender?) based on your prose. I submitted my most recent post, which I will readily admit was influenced by Stephen R. Donaldson's writing style, and got the following:

Words: 344

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

Female Score: 247
Male Score: 784

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
When I clicked the link to tell it that it was wrong, I got the following note in a pop-up:

That is one butch chick.
The window went on to helpfully mention that

According to Koppel and Argamon, the algorithm should predict the gender of the author approximately 80% of the time.
I figured I'd try another post, so I picked my ramble about Aishiteruze Baby. Here are the results:

Words: 908

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

Female Score: 1538
Male Score: 1531

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Okay, so, I'm only a woman by a matter of seven points. Guess I blog like a guy!

Next I thought I'd shift gears and try a short story.

Words: 1482

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

Female Score: 2271
Male Score: 1592

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Ah-ha! (Though I'm concerned about whether I picked the correct option. Fiction? Nonfiction? I mean...it's nonfiction. It happened. But I wrote it for my fiction class, because I'm a n00b. Regardless, I put "nonfiction" in, so there you go.)

Okay, one more test...this time from a diary entry from when I was 13.

Words: 859

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

Female Score: 1754
Male Score: 1638

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
I'VE ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THIS!!!

It would appear, inconclusively, based on this tiny smattering of data, that I sound the most like a woman when I am storytelling rather than rambling. Good to know!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My results:

NANOWRIMO - Military SciFi
Words: 5902
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 5970
Male Score: 7019

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

BLOG ENTRIES

Words: 1728
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 2471
Male Score: 3826

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

Words: 737
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 1234
Male Score: 2015

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

It seems I write like a guy. Which makes perfect sense, as I am a guy. Still there was one odd ball

NANOWRIMO - Fantasy
Words: 3481
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 4399
Male Score: 4077

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

Technically 3 odd balls since I ran each of the sections that make up the texts separately and got the same result each time. I suspect the result was skewed by the fact that I was writing from the female POV throughout that story. The Genie seems to count feminine pronouns toward the over all score. Since there were only two male characters in that story, one of which was only referenced and never seen, the othe appearing only breifly, it would skew the result.

Sam

Anonymous said...

Apparently, my fiction is female, while my nonfiction is male. Go fig.

--Will Sansbury

Heather Meadows said...

Will, were you using that story you have online? It's from a female perspective, isn't it? I think Sam may have a point about the pronouns (and also perhaps about writing from a perspective in general).