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Show HN: An API for gender classification

gender.hankstoever.com

41–46 of 46 posts

Re: Show HN: An API for gender classification

#41
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At least in the UK, Jack is a fairly common shortening of Jacqueline. The only way of determining a users gender is asking them directly, and if a person wishes to enter different values into different systems, all the more power to them.

Re: Show HN: An API for gender classification

#42
I think it is important to make a distinction between gender and sex [1]. The link below is a makes a pretty good distinction between the two.

"Sex" refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women.

"Gender" refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.

[1]- http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/

Re: Show HN: An API for gender classification

#43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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."

You have just used the numbers from the API as evidence of its own accuracy.

Re: Show HN: An API for gender classification

#44
post #10

John - 57.3% ?

Definitely some odd results: Michael = 52%, Thomas = 62% (although Tom = 98%)

Yup.

'Eric' (which often becomes Erica for females) scored a 10% higher chance of being male than 'John' did (Eric = 66.854585% while John = 57.399103%).

What's also surprising is the dramatic change the Anglicizing of the name brings: 'Erik' = 91.939346% while 'Eric' = 66.854585%

Re: Show HN: An API for gender classification

#45
post #42

I think it is important to make a distinction between gender and sex [1]. The link below is a makes a pretty good distinction between the two. "Sex" refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women. "Gender" refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. [1]- http://www.who.int/gender/wh…

And even sex[1] is sometimes not as binary as we make it to be.

[1]:http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/22620/Nav/1/router.asp

Re: Show HN: An API for gender classification

#46
post #23

I started searching for the most gender ambiguous names I could think of like "Jesse", "Alex", "Erin", etc. The best one I've found so far is "Angel" at 51.1% male.

This is pretty fun lol. I searched for Santa and it said 99% female haha.

Apparently god is overwhelmingly male at 99.998179%
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