A new computer program can tell whether a book was written by a man or a woman. The simple scan of key words and syntax is around 80% accurate on both fiction and non-fiction. The program's success seems to confirm the stereotypical perception of differences in male and female language use. Crudely put, men talk more about objects, and women more about relationships. (from nature.com).
Seems worth a try. jill/text comments that "The Gender Genie is scary: it can tell I'm a woman from what I write." So I plugged in my review about a palm phone that I just got, and Gender Genie says that I am female. Surprising to me since the text I submitted was about technology; one might suppose that it would have more "male" characteristics than other passages I might write.
What is everyone else's experience?'
I'm a woman, too.
According to the gender genie, I'm a woman! I pasted in some promotional copy for commontext, and it determined I have a "female" writing style. Too bad I don't have any of the other advantages that women have :)
I wonder if it mistakes more men for women, or vice versa.
--Dave
Genie barely above 50% accurate
While the Genie is barely above 50% accurate at the moment, I think that may be because the mistakes are self-reported.
As it is now, you paste in your text, push a button, read the results, and then either push the "go back button", erase your old text and paste in new text; or, you tell the Genie whether it was right or wrong, view a popup with the results, close the popup, push "go back," erase the old text, and paste in new text.
When I give feedback to the Genie, I am committing myself to some extra (boring and unnecessary) steps. When the Genie is right, I am not particularly motivated to tell it so; when the Genie is wrong, I am more motivated to tell it. Thus, it may be the case that the feedback form is attracting more negative than positive responses.
I suggest that on the screen that displays the results, there be two buttons: one pink and one blue; the user clicks "The writer was female" or "The writer was male", and then is taken immediately to a screen that not only shows the current accuracy ratings, but also has a blank form.
Dennis G. Jerz
Jerz's Literacy Weblog
re: genie barely above 50%
Thanks for the info--I didn't see the popup because I have them blocked in Safari (though I just tried turning them off and it still didn't work. Works in Camino, though).
--Dave
I'm a woman, and so is vitia!
Ha. I put my abstract for the AoIR conference (which I blogged) in there, and it said I was a woman. Then I put the comment in that Mike posted in reply to my abstract, and the Genie said he, too, was a woman.
CultureCat
A Shapeshifter I Am
The first text I submitted was a presentation proposal about commonplaces and the Camp Fire Girls for the upcoming Feminisms and Rhetorics conference. I chose it for its APAish style. In that voice, I am a man. The next text was a dry run for the preliminary exams that was more reflective and most likely more MLAish because of the need for multiple quotes. In that text, I am a woman.
I believe those of us who are in the business of writing have a pronounced ability to consciously skew our writing style to fit the needed audience. The hard-charging "I believe" proposal takes the manspeak voice, even for a feminist rhetoric conference. The intricate weaving of voices and thoughtfulness needed for a prelim comes out more "feminine," no matter who's on the other side of the keyboard.
In other words, the test ain't designed for us. On the other hand, I thought the genie would think James Joyce is a woman, too. Nope. The beginning of The Artist as a Young Man--male.
Gender
I guess the only texts that show up as male are documents concerning algorithms. ;-)
gender plusses and minuses
Some might think this a little thing, but did anyone notice that the way they determine gender deals with attributing positive and negative numerical values to certain words or word types and then compiling these to see what side of zero your text falls on.
Is it any surprise that, in this system, "masculine" writing gets positive numerical values and "feminine" writing gets negative numerical values?
Are you saying that sexism is
Are you saying that sexism is inherent in the system??