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A better approach to determining gender from a first name

genderize.io

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Re: A better approach to determining gender from a first name

#21

Post by masklinn »

ludicast wrote: post #20

I like this from a usability standpoint. Just as some forms auto-fill the city/state based on the zip (and might get it wrong), this enables something similar. And it might get it wrong, but if your mom gave you a girl's name* blame her. It also seems accurate: Pat = about 50/50 David = All man Jessica = All woman Also, wrt to "binary gender identity" complaints, are we all college freshmen here? * my own name (Nord)…

> wrt to "binary gender identity" complaints, are we all college freshmen here?

We aren't, which is exactly why it's a problem.

Re: A better approach to determining gender from a first name

#22

Post by kmike84 »

In morphologically rich languages (like Russian) the most discriminative feature for detecting gender could be the word shape of last name or middle name, not the first name. So in many languages there is no way to have meaningful gender prediction by analyzing just the first name. Relative gender frequency for the first name is an useful information, but it is just not enough for reliable gender prediction.

Re: A better approach to determining gender from a first name

#23

Post by sdoering »

marijn wrote: post #15

> {"name":"marijn","gender":"female","probability":"1.00","count":1} Except, of course, that I am male. My name is used for both genders. The thing completely failed on a few other ambiguous names I tried. I'll second AndrewDucker's opinion—just don't.

The same goes for the following, a name used for both genders in Italy:

{"name":"maria","gender":"female","probability":"1.00","count":700}

Re: A better approach to determining gender from a first name

#24

Post by k__ »

sdoering wrote: post #23
marijn wrote: post #15

> {"name":"marijn","gender":"female","probability":"1.00","count":1} Except, of course, that I am male. My name is used for both genders. The thing completely failed on a few other ambiguous names I tried. I'll second AndrewDucker's opinion—just don't.

The same goes for the following, a name used for both genders in Italy: {"name":"maria","gender":"female","probability":"1.00","count":700}

failed with my name, too.

{ "name": "kay", "gender": "female", "probability": "0.93", "count": 57, "country_id": "US", "language_id": "en" }

Re: A better approach to determining gender from a first name

#25

Post by ludicast »

masklinn wrote: post #21
ludicast wrote: post #20

I like this from a usability standpoint. Just as some forms auto-fill the city/state based on the zip (and might get it wrong), this enables something similar. And it might get it wrong, but if your mom gave you a girl's name* blame her. It also seems accurate: Pat = about 50/50 David = All man Jessica = All woman Also, wrt to "binary gender identity" complaints, are we all college freshmen here? * my own name (Nord)…

> wrt to "binary gender identity" complaints, are we all college freshmen here? We aren't, which is exactly why it's a problem.

Nobody is saying a form can't have "other", etc. as an option. Just that someone's MVP that guesses gender is allowed to do that without political-correctness police.

I fail to see how this API needs to accommodate transpeople in its 0.1 release.

Re: A better approach to determining gender from a first name

#26

Post by ronaldx »

marijn wrote: post #15

> {"name":"marijn","gender":"female","probability":"1.00","count":1} Except, of course, that I am male. My name is used for both genders. The thing completely failed on a few other ambiguous names I tried. I'll second AndrewDucker's opinion—just don't.

This result is really saying that 1 out of 1 tested Marijns are female - since they have only tested one Marijn, you should consider the result in this light.

The numbers are honest enough to admit that the result is crap in this case - this type of statistical openness should be encouraged.

Re: A better approach to determining gender from a first name

#29

Post by jakewalker »

k__ wrote: post #24
sdoering wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same goes for the following, a name used for both genders in Italy: {"name":"maria","gender":"female","probability":"1.00","count":700}

failed with my name, too. { "name": "kay", "gender": "female", "probability": "0.93", "count": 57, "country_id": "US", "language_id": "en" }

How is that a "fail"? The probability is listed as 93%.

Re: A better approach to determining gender from a first name

#30

Post by yummyfajitas »

brey wrote: post #7

Interesting from a machine-learning perspective - but this strikes me as a solution looking for a problem. If any service needs to know gender (and I'm having a hard time thinking of times you NEED to know gender - dating sites?) - why not just ask? surely in a situation where you're reliant on having accurate gender information, guessing from $firstname and getting it wrong is worse than asking.

Here is a place where it's helpful and guessing wrong is ok. Consider a movie information site, which for some reason knows your name (but nothing else).

Male homepage: Die Hard, Star Wars, Bridget Jones.

Female homepage: Bridget Jones, Twilight, Star Wars.

Both males and females are shown primarily movies they are more likely to be interested in and your bounce rate goes down.

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