rethnicity: An R package for predicting ethnicity from names
Fangzhou Xie
Abstract
In this study, a new R package, rethnicity 1 is provided for predicting ethnicity based on names. The Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM), a recurrent neural network architecture commonly used for natural language processing, was chosen as the model for our study. The Florida Voter Registration was used as the training and testing data. Special care was given for the accuracy of minority groups by adjusting the imbalance in the dataset. The models were trained and exported to C++ and then integrated with R using Rcpp. Additionally, the availability, accuracy, and performance of the package were compared with other solutions.
Topics & Concepts
Computer scienceR packageEthnic groupArtificial neural networkNatural language processingArtificial intelligenceMachine learningProgramming languageSociologyAnthropologyAuthorship Attribution and ProfilingNames, Identity, and Discrimination ResearchNatural Language Processing Techniques