Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The Gender Genie

The Gender Genie: "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."

I tried this with a passage picked at random from A Bond with Death, one of my mysteries with a female protagonist. The Gender Genie believed it had been written by a female, by a very high percentage.

Link via The Little Professor.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bill, Do you take the Gender Genie's results as a complement or insult?

mybillcrider said...

I'm just not sure how well the Genie works. I'd take it as a compliment if I really believe in it.

Benjie said...

I don't know how well it works, but I tried with four different passages from various of my writings and all came out male. The scores for male and female were close, but always dominated by male key words.

Does this mean you're more in touch with your feminine side, Bill?

mybillcrider said...

Maybe only when I'm writing books with a female protagonist. I'm scared to try anything else now.