This is an interesting but pretty shallow analysis of demographics vs app usage by some researchers. In taking the quiz, my result was:
You are a married lady older than 32 who makes more than $52,000/year
You're either a married, middle-aged lady … or you use your phone like one.
The article seems to call out what app triggered the gender switch — which is ironic, because I only installed it in the last week or so, doing some work around my quotations database.
The rest of the article is sort of a vague "If you let apps know what apps you have installed, the evil corps learn all sorts of things about you" warning, which doesn't move me very much, both because of the results I got and because I don't particularly mind if some evil corp even accurately figures out my gender, age range, or even my socio-economic class.
Quiz: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?
A new study from researchers predicts the demographics of smartphone-users based solely on the apps they have on their phones. Can we guess your age, income and marital status from your app usage alone?
You got that too? Not very accurate, but I guess it's also impressive to get everything wrong 😂
"You are a single guy under 32 years of age who makes less than $52,000 per year, or you use like your phone like someone who matches that demographic."
Nice escape clause there at the end. I think I had maybe four of the apps that they asked about. Half of them I've never even heard of.
Married guy under 32 making more than $52k.
Two of those things are correct.
My question is, why is the threshold for age 32, and why is the threshold for income $52k?
I think that's a breakpoint in terms of low-middle to middle-middle class or something. I've seen that per annum before.
I got "You are a married lady older than 32 who makes more than $52,000/year" Words with friends, Youtube, and Google Maps were my only matches.
They missed all my video and tabletop game companion apps, and all the home automation and RDP/network analysis apps that would have really pegged me.
+David Newman $56k is the median US income, not sure why $52k was chosen instead except for what +Doyce Testerman said.
At least we now know who hired Miss Cleo.
Apparently "You are a married lady older than 32 who makes more than $52,000/year"
Basically because the only apps in their list that I do have installed were Google Maps and Youtube…
But those apps come with the phone – who doesn't have them installed? Is it saying something that I know they are installed? Should I have answered yes to the "Uber" question because I have Hailo installed, which is what one uses for cabs in this part of the world… I thought having AirBNB and TripIt installed would have said something, but it never asked about those and instead asked about some I've never even heard of.
OK, I clicked "Uber" this time, since it was analagous to Hailo, and now "You are a single lady younger than 32 who makes less than $52,000/year"
Hilarious.
The bigger worry is that an evil corp INACCURATELY figures out my gender, age range, or even my socio-economic class.
I'm in the same category as most of you, with 4/32 apps on my phone. The answer to the question posed in the title of the article is clearly "no."
+John E. Bredehoft the bigger worry is that by being a married mid-50s male identified as a single sub-32 female, some government decides I am a problem that needs to be corrected. I wouldn't mind being 32 again (even in hex!) but I'm happy enough with my current gender, and to change it would confuse my kids.
lol. I'm a single guy, older than 32, who makes more than $52,000 per year.
Come to think of it, that might explain a few things….