text analysis

[Bill Stewart]

At 12:09 AM 04/30/2003 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>On Tue, 29 Apr 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>
> > FWIW: There's a paragraph in the current _Science_ that mentions
> > "Winnow", a program by some .il researchers that guesses the sex of 
> authors by their
> > writing.  They claim 80% accuracy on general lit
>
>Perhaps impressive, perhaps not. What's the actual percentage ratio? I bet
>it's decidedly male.
>
> > and 74% accuracy on 30 science papers.
>
>Considering the known sex ration in science fields one can guess 'male'
>all the time and hit that level.

Yup.
Weather forecasting in Ithaca New York was similarly simple.
"50% chance of rain today"  (Or snow, in the winter...)