Interesting results from statistical analysis of sentences about men and women from one week's worth of NYTimes articles earlier this year.

My quick interepretation: If your knowledge of men's and women's roles in society came just from reading last week's New York Times, you would think that men play sports and run the government. Women do feminine and domestic things. To be honest, I was a little shocked at how stereotypical the words used in the women subject sentences were.

The top 10 words used disproportionately in referring to men were prime, baseball, official, capital, governor, fans, minister, sequester, league, failed. For women, they were pregnant, husband's, suffrage, breast, gender, pregnancy, dresses, birth, memoir, and baby.

Some useful disclaimers within, but I'm more interested in this as an example of the type of analysis computers now enable which will unearth hidden patterns in language (as discussed in this earlier post on emotional expression in 20th century books). I'd love more access to tools like this.