Very fun algorithm guesses your name with surprising accuracy

It got the diminutive everyday-use version of my full name after two letters. Pretty good.

I wonder if a human being could guess my name at least 1 in 3 times just by looking at me.

1 Like

Half credit for me. It didn’t guess my name correctly, but based on the first letter, it correctly identified the name that people almost always (probably 90%) say when they’ve forgotten my actual name.

3 Likes

It didn’t show up till the 3rd letter and didn’t show up as top till I typed the whole thing.

1 Like

I think you’re on to something there. No, seriously. Like a new level of Turing test or something.

1 Like

Uh, yep. I tried my damnedest to get it to guess Ay-ay-ron and Jay-quelin. Nope.

3 Likes

You done messed up

3 Likes

Insubordinate and churlish.

2 Likes

With all those hit records? How could it not?

meh, i figure that by the late 60s/early 70s, that name was waaaaay out of fashion.

1 Like

It may technically be an algorithm, but calling it a “name guessing algorithm” seems like an attempt to make it sound like more than it is, so that the uninitiated think there’s some voodoo going on - it’s just a prefix lookup of names by year, by sex, ordered by popularity.

No, there aren’t any machine learning techniques used here.

I had to type in my whole name because I guess Jason, John and Joseph were more popular in the 70s.

It nailed my name first letter. Black US American person here.

3 Likes

It asked if it was correct but I’m unable to input yes or no. Am I having browser issue or does the search stop after only three pieces of info?

1 Like

you can keep typing past three characters but that is how dumb the UI is.

Point taken, but I think by and large these sorts of data sets do a much better job of reflecting the (ugh) “dominant culture” than (ugh) “minority groups”.

I’m not sure about the need for the “ugh” and the scare quotes when we are specifically talking about an algorithm failing to reflect a group of people because the algorithm is statistics based and those people are a minority and thus underrepresented in the statistics. I mean, the fact that the group of people who are likely to give their kids certain names represent a minority of the population is precisely the salient point here.

1 Like

It’s more like, the ease with which we culturally split people into “the majority” and “minorities” disappoints me. But I guess that’s just how our spongy meat computers work.

1 Like

It was very wrong. But…I’m trans. I changed the gender to the one I was assigned and it correctly guessed my dead name.

ETA: Interestingly, the first choice it gave me originally is my mother’s first name.

2 Likes