Saturday, August 16, 2008

Can your computer tell your gender?

Well check out this site for some convincing. The author has written a program that looks at your browser history to determine your gender. It's pretty darn cool.

Interesting story: the first time I used the program (a couple of weeks ago), I got a 90-something probability of being female. Since then, I've cleared my browsing history (a good thing to do every once in a while). Just now, I ran the program again and now my number is down to 55% probability of being female. I guess I've been doing some manly surfing lately. (It's probably all the car research I've been doing, although you think bettycrocker.com and some soap opera sites would balance that out more.)

If any of you try it, let me know what you get!

4 comments:

AMT said...

Is this the website that you meant http://www.mikeonads.com/2008/07/13/using-your-browser-url-history-estimate-gender/ ? That's the one I found with an internet search, and I got this:

Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 32%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 68%

I pasted my more specific results below. There are a few on there from where Mike used my computer (like UFC and Apple Insider) which I think skewed my results a bit, but I don't think those few sites would skew it to 68%. I must be more masculine than I knew!

Site Male-Female Ratio
google.com
0.98
yahoo.com
0.9
youtube.com
1
wikipedia.org
1.08
mapquest.com
0.83
facebook.com
0.83
cnn.com
1.35
blogger.com
1.06
imdb.com
1.06
limewire.com
0.79
wunderground.com
1.22
allrecipes.com
0.57
qvc.com
0.36
mininova.org
1.63
samsclub.com
0.96
tmz.com
0.77
google.ca
1.33
lifehacker.com
1.63
rottentomatoes.com
1.17
msnbc.com
1.11
cbc.ca
1.25
gawker.com
1.17
scifi.com
1.04
starbucks.com
0.65
defamer.com
1.15
ufc.com
1.35
engadget.com
1.7
logitech.com
1.41
gmail.com
0.9
usanetwork.com
0.59
appleinsider.com
2.51
thestar.com
1.47
cjb.net
1.27
io9.com
2.33
jezebel.com
1.02
tudou.com
0.85
findlinks.com
1.02
knoxnews.com
1.08
fitnessmagazine.com
0.52
televisionwithoutpity.com
0.32
farecompare.com
0.9

Heidi said...

Okay--I fixed the link. Thanks for pointing that out, Amber.

Hmmm...I don't know why you got those numbers, but it is probably kind of important that Mike used the computer, too. Just for fun, you should clear your history and then see what you get in a couple of days.

Alternatively, maybe Canada is making you more manly...

Kate said...

I'm not sure what this says about me...on my work computer, I get 88% likelihood of being female; on my home computer I get 100% likelihood of being female. I guess I'm more masculine at work!

Shannon said...

I think that I recently cleared my history... but here is what I just got. ... I must be pretty
AMBI-sexterous! (oh the good ole days with Heidi's big ole dictonary!!)

Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 51%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 49%



Site Male-Female Ratio
yahoo.com
0.9
blogger.com
1.06