文章基本信息

标题：Using genderize.io to infer the gender of first names: how to improve the accuracy of the inference
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作者：Paul Sebo
期刊名称：Journal of the Medical Library Association
印刷版ISSN：1536-5050
出版年度：2021
卷号：109
期号：4
页码：609-612
DOI：10.5195/jmla.2021.1252
语种：English
出版社：Medical Library Association
摘要：We recently showed that genderize.io is not a sufficiently powerful gender detection tool due to a large number of nonclassifications. In the present study, we aimed to assess whether the accuracy of inference by genderize.io can be improved by manipulating the first names in the database. Methods: We used a database containing the first names, surnames, and gender of 6,131 physicians practicing in a multicultural country (Switzerland). We uploaded the original CSV file (file #1), the file obtained after removing all diacritic marks, such as accents and cedilla (file #2), and the file obtained after removing all diacritic marks and retaining only the first term of the compound first names (file #3). For each file, we computed three performance metrics: proportion of misclassifications (errorCodedWithoutNA), proportion of nonclassifications (naCoded), and proportion of misclassifications and nonclassifications (errorCoded). Results: naCoded, which was high for file #1 (16.4%), was reduced after data manipulation (file #2: 11.7%, file #3: 0.4%). As the increase in the number of misclassifications was small, the overall performance of genderize.io (i.e., errorCoded) improved, especially for file #3 (file #1: 17.7%, file #2: 13.0%, and file #3: 2.3%). Conclusions: A relatively simple manipulation of the data improved the accuracy of gender inference by genderize.io. We recommend using genderize.io only with files that were modified in this way.
关键词：accuracy; gender determination; genderize.io; misclassification; name; name-to-gender; performance