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Show HN: An API for gender classification

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Re: Show HN: An API for gender classification

#33

Post by aw3c2 »

joaomsa wrote: post #25
sambeau wrote: post #19

The only reliable way to find out someone's gender is to ask them what gender they currently think they are. There are more than two genders and an individual's gender can change with time. A better strategy all-round would to be ask yourself whether you need to know someone's gender. I can think of very few legitimate reasons to know and record a user's gender and many of them can be dealt with by simply asking them…

One use I've come across for inferring genders was tackling record depupliction across multiple data sources. In one data set we might have the gender information of an individual but have it be missing in another. Turns out gender is great to include in a blocking keys to reduce number of comparisons. Extrapolating an inferred gender in the dataset without one was incredibly helpful.

You are forgetting that the individual might consider the gender to be private information. Some people might want to use a different gender in different contexts. See the ESPN/Grantland suicide issue recently if you care/dare.

Re: Show HN: An API for gender classification

#35

Post by terabytest »

splitbrain wrote: post #18

Without a location parameter this is pretty useless. Andrea for example is a male name in Spain and Italy as far as I know. Also this: http://www.cscyphers.com/blog/2012/06/28/falsehoods-programm...

I'm Italian, my name is Gabriele and it classifies it as female. That's wrong. In Italy, Gabriele is a male name. I agree that this is useless without location information.

Re: Show HN: An API for gender classification

#36

Post by mseebach »

aw3c2 wrote: post #33
joaomsa wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One use I've come across for inferring genders was tackling record depupliction across multiple data sources. In one data set we might have the gender information of an individual but have it be missing in another. Turns out gender is great to include in a blocking keys to reduce number of comparisons. Extrapolating an inferred gender in the dataset without one was incredibly helpful.

You are forgetting that the individual might consider the gender to be private information. Some people might want to use a different gender in different contexts. See the ESPN/Grantland suicide issue recently if you care/dare.

An individual that considers gender to be private information , and that uses different genders in different situations is very unlikely to be using a name that can be classified with a high degree of confidence as one gender.

A person using the name "Jack" is unlikely to be assumed to be a woman, even if that person selected "female" from a drop down somewhere. If the same person uses Jack/M and Cindy/F in different contexts, no fuzzy algorithm is going to resolve them as the same person (bar some other, stronger ID, such as a SSN).

EDIT: I initially used "William" as an example. Ironically, it turns out that name is only 57.6% male. Both Jack and Cindy are 90% male/female.

Re: Show HN: An API for gender classification

#40

Post by nl »

I spend a lot of time choosing gender neutral names for story based scenarios in proposals (the joys of corporate work).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisex_name has been mentioned elsewhere, but I've found it pretty useful.

Unlike a lot of people here, I don't think there is anything wrong with an API like this. It's true that it isn't culturally neutral, but there are times when any piece of information is useful.

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