Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?

#31

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

Keats wrote: post #29

"You are a married guy older than 32 who makes more than $52,000/year" Not really no, granted I ticked no to all the boxes apart from youtube/maps that comes with android

[deleted]

Re: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?

#32

Post by Splines » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

Amusingly, Betteridge's law of headlines holds true here as well.

Re: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?

#33

Post by pacala » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

You are a single lady younger than 32 who makes less than $52,000/year. Wrong, wrong, wrong and, drumroll, wrong.

Re: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?

#34

Post by my5thaccount » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

mirkules wrote: post #5

detaro wrote: post #2

They should add a "were we right?" box at the bottom, I bet the results would be pretty bad. (For me, not a single thing they assume is right)

They could train the algorithm that way too.

That's how Hunch worked and it was pretty good.

Re: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?

#35

Post by cpitman » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 6:21 PM UTC

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #19

vonmoltke wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? It got everything except your gender correct.

Missing the age by a generation and the income by multiples is not 'correct' IMHO.

They only said they would guess over/under for each of those thresholds, so no, it was correct.

Re: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?

#36

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 6:21 PM UTC

jamiepenney wrote: post #23

Got me 100% right, which is weird because I figured the lack of apps on my phone would be a problem (I have a windows phone so there's a lot missing). Sounds like it wasn't too accurate for the rest of you though.

[deleted]

Re: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?

#37

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #19

vonmoltke wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? It got everything except your gender correct.

Missing the age by a generation and the income by multiples is not 'correct' IMHO.

[deleted]

Re: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?

#38

Post by ape4 » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

Most Washington Post readers are older. But it would be cheating to use that info.

Re: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?

#39

Post by malft » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

andrethegiant wrote: post #25

If I'm not mistaken, iOS apps aren't allowed to see what other apps are installed, is that correct?

They're allowed to ask "does anything on this system handle yelp:// URLs?".

Re: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?

#40

Post by lmitchell » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

marchelzo wrote: post #10

"You are a married lady older than 32 who makes more than $52,000/year You're either a married, middle-aged lady ... or you use your phone like one." 19 year old male. The only apps that I have on their list are YouTube and Google Maps.

Well that's interesting - the only difference between you and I was YouTube, and I'm a married man over 32 making 52,000+. (I have YouTube because Google installed it by default on my phone but I disabled it so I didn't count - also, I'm a 23-year old male who makes a lot less than 52,000/year :D )