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Using Facebook Data, Algorithm Predicts Personality Better Than Friends
sciencehabit writes: A new study of Facebook data shows that machines are now better at sussing out our true personalities than our friends. One of the standard methods for assessing personality is to analyze people's answers to a 100-item questionnaire with a statistical technique called factor analysis. There are five main factors that divide people by personality—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—which is why personality researchers call this test the Big Five. People can accurately predict how their friends will answer the Big Five questions. ... Compared with humans predicting their friends' personalities by filling out the Big Five questionnaire, the computer's prediction based on Facebook likes was almost 15% more accurate on average, the team reports online today in PNAS (abstract). Only people's spouses were better than the computer at judging personality.
And yet, I got dirty looks in church on Sunday because I didn't know somebody was seriously ill for a month with pneumonia. Apparently, everybody (but me) has been talking about it on Facebook and if I don't know I'm the bad guy.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The names of the factors are guesses. Factor analysis looks at the covariance matrix of items, and finds sub-matrices of the total matrix that meaningfully covary. Each one of those sub-matrices is called a factor, or latent variable, which is measured by common covariation between the questions. The number of latent factors found in a questionnaire is typically derived both by theory (we made a questionnaire intended to measure these 6 different things) and empirical facts (of which typically would be Horn's parallel analysis or the Kaiser criterion [which simply means all eigen values of the covariance matrix that are greater than one]). The factors are named because that is what was a suitable commonality between the items first measured, along with external criterions like predicting other theoretically related constructs. The Big 5 are an enormously well studied problem space, and the stability and pervasiveness of these concepts have been well documented and linked to specific gene expressions, developmental trends, et cet.
Dude, I have no belief in a god but I still feel an obligation to do good. Indeed, it's because I do not believe in a god that I have such a compulsion: my life is worth nothing beyond what I choose to do while I'm alive, and anybody can live for themselves, but to be worth anything requires living in pursuit of goodness.
This doesn't mean I lack respect for those people who do good through religious compulsion, however. Indeed, I have far more respect for such people than those atheists who use lack of god as an excuse to do whatever they like, or - worse - try to impose some -ism (from American Capitalism to Soviet Communism) on the grounds that they are convinced they have 100% understanding of humanity and what's good for it. Ugh.
So, (non-sarcastic) good for you, but there are other ways to do god's work (as you might see it) other than through believing in god :-).
Haven't you failed to read the article before claiming that it is wrong?
For those playing along at home, Fig.1 from the actual article explicitly refutes the AC's claim.
It is not explicit, but it is clear that they did not use Facebook friends, preferring real ones instead.