Harry Potter is full of fantastical elements, almost all of which are complete works of fiction. However, one magical part of the books has now found its way into existence, thanks to the power of IBM’s Watson and the ingenuity of a father.
While there are countless internet quizzes devoted to helping you find the right Hogwarts house, this Watson-powered Sorting Hat is as close to the real deal as you’re ever going to get. The hat, created by IBM engineer Ryan Anderson, was nothing more than a fun project to encourage his two daughters into STEM subjects and applications by combining it with their love for Harry Potter.
The project is built to mimic the Sorting Hat, complete with eyes and a mouth. But rather than magic, it’s powered by Watson’s cloud-computing genius. Using Watson’s Natural Language Classifier and Speech to Text technology, the wearer talks to the hat and is then sorted according to what’s been said.
As reported by The Next Web, Anderson coded the hat to sort words according to the characteristics of each Hogwarts house. For instance, Ravenclaw is associated with brainy and clever statements, while Hufflepuff is linked with honesty. In Anderson’s tests, the hat linked Stephen Hawking and Hillary Clinton to Ravenclaw, deciding that Donald Trump belonged in Gryffindor due to his boldness – thankfully, it was only 48% certain of its choice.
So what if you want to build your own Harry Potter Sorting Hat? Well, Anderson has provided a complete tutorial on how to build your own – using IBM’s Bluemix to test it. Not a bad project for a rather wet and rainy summer’s day in Britain.
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