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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.
The comment that the algorithm does better at predicting personality than a person's friends will depend very strongly on how you define a friend. I have a very large number of Facebook friends about whom I know almost nothing, so I am not at all surprised that an algorithm will do better.
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
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...
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.