Wednesday, November 02, 2005 - 12:18 pm

The Gender Genie

…At last he clasped his hands in prayer, and in so doing rubbed the ring, which the magician had forgotten to take from him. Immediately an enormous and frightful genie rose out of the earth, saying: "What wouldst thou with me? I am the Slave of the Ring, and will obey thee in all things." ~Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp
“Hey, honey! Look at what I’ve found. The Gender Genie! Now you don’t have to go for the ultrasound scan!”

Wait, no! Ultrasound imaging is not in the Gender Genie’s resume. He can’t determine the gender of a baby in the womb. He’s only adept at distinguishing an author’s gender by analysing a sample of his/her work.

You see, it is found that males and females have different styles of writing. It is therefore possible to determine the sex of an author by analysing his/her work. What the Gender Genie does is to compare the ratio of certain words appearing in a 500-word sample text. Because some of these words are used more frequently only by those of a particular sex, the Genie is able to guess the gender of the writer with an accuracy of 80%, as the programmer claims.

Hmm, curious. So, I gave it a try by letting the Genie analyse one of my blog posts. “The Gender Genie thinks you’re a male!” Wow, how true! Then I tried another one. Male. And another one. Male. And another one. Male, too! That’s an accuracy of 100% for my case!

June thought it was kind of fun. So, she chucked in one of Raptor’s blog posts. With all those swear words he used, she reckoned it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to tell that it was from a guy. But, surprise, surprise. The Genie thought the sample came from a girl! What that implies, I leave it to your imagination… Heh!

I then randomly picked a post from a few blogs and ran the test. The results are as follows.

June. Male. To this, she adamantly remarked, “Who says a girl can’t be a tomboy?”
Disenfranchised Girl. Female.
Tan Sri. Male.
Dan. Male.
CW Tan. Male.
Lin. Female.
Lydia. Female.
EA Cheng. Male

So, the verdict? The Genie is rather accurate, except for some "exceptions"!

23 comments:

Tan Sri said...

It is interesting to note that Aaron Chee's gender came out to be Female..

Cheng Eng Aun said...

Hmm... it's accurate and quite accountable. By the way, apart from the style of writing, I think style of punctuations may play an important part in determining a person's gender based on blog post too.

sjune said...

why didn't you write about tst's :P

Anonymous said...

My blog are all in chinese one, so i use the english comment tat i wrote in ur blog.
Why????!!!!!
Why????!!!!!
Why it grades me as female????
Woo woo woo.....

raptor_ravenlord said...

there must hv been sum mistake! i demand to use a post of my choice!

Tan Sri said...

hahaha... u sent me ur own choice of posts... and both came out female...

List of Mis-Gendered People :
Actual Males :
1. TST (tested with 3 posts)
2. Aaron Chee
3. PHYee
4. GehCK
5. Mona Chong Wei Liang

Actual Females :
1. June

any more to add to the list ? :P

Kryptos said...

cheng>> but this one doesn't take into consideration punctuations. but it's rather accurate!

june>> yes, i wrote about tst. maybe u missed it.

tan sri>> gosh, y do u need to run the test when some (i'm not naming anyone!) are so evident??? i guess that makes wanker a lesbian instead of a gay!

Kryptos said...

phyee>> go write smth longer than 500 words and test again. it's more accurate that way.

Tan Sri said...

I also just discovered Gabriel is also on the list....

amphibian sp. said...

i cant believe that... 2 out of my 3 recent posts have more feminism than masculinity??!! the results r disputable but there's some grounds to think its accurate i think... (gawd!)

Anonymous said...

Haha, u cun suddenly ask me to write something more than 500 words to run the test mah.
I will do the test again if i got write some blog more than 500 words.
Hehe.

Zzzyun said...

hmm...at least it got mine right. though the 'girl' in my nick is a dead giveaway...keke..but it is pretty fun! gonna try it out! muahaha..*evil laughter*

Tan Sri said...

just take it as if your writing a long essay tat goddess gave u :P

Anonymous said...

Accurate meh?
I think it sure has very large deviation.
Coz just judge by seeing those keywords.
Habits of using certain keywords got say male or female one meh?

CW TAN said...

well... using swear words make it sound more female-ish.... If the "gender genie" uses Western examples, it turns out that women swear more than men. And besides, they love to have their words tiny, what do u ppl think???

Wei Zhi said...

OMG... now even WORDS hv sex!! what will we hv nxt?? homosexual terms?? gosh gosh.....
n sighz... wat will happen to all the nice stuff transexuals write? will their gender b ignored?? answer me O great gender genie!
but well.. after all tat babbling.. i am glad i am recognised as male... hiak hiak hiak hiak =P

Anonymous said...

Haha, may be there r really got words for homosexual or transexual.
Aiya, no need to worry lah.

Kryptos said...

dan>> remember that tst underwent ......SEXCHANGE? the genie had no trouble distinguishing he NOW a female. *grin*

dear everyone,
face it, people! the gender genie speaks the TRUTH! there's no way to refute that! MUAHAHAHAHA!

Wei Zhi said...

hhahaa... tst ah.. he shud b grateful the gender genie din brand him as 'it' XD so things aint tat bad yet... hehehehhee =P

Zzzyun said...

actually i dun think it's very accurate...i tried it out using my own posts...and some branded me as male while some were female!!
huh?!
besides i dun think the word "in" is used more by males, dun u think? sometimes it's just a matter of grammar la..
strange...

K.O.J.A. said...

what happened here?

sjune said...

haha....gender genie not accurate one lah :P

sjune said...

phew! my son's blog entry came out as a male's :P