True Harry Potter fans have spent far too much time wondering what Hogwarts house they’d be sorted into if they were a witch or wizard in J.K. Rowling's novels. Seeing as the wizarding world is — most unfortunately — fictional, wondering was really all you can do until now. With the help of IBM Watson, there is now a real-life Sorting Hat that can tell you which Hogwarts house you belong in.
The hat was built by Ryan Anderson, who officially became the coolest dad ever when he decided to make this real-life Sorting Hat for his two young daughters. In order to get your house assignment, you place the sorting hat on your head and give it a brief — and honest — description of yourself. As Tech Insider explains, this sorting hat then uses Watson's Natural Language Classifier and speech-to -text features to interpret the intent behind the words you've just spoken. The sorting is accomplished based on descriptive words that Anderson, with the help of his daughters, coded into the device.
Here's a lab demo that shows how it works:
If you want to try your hand at making your own Sorting Hat, you can download Anderson's code and give it a shot. So, go crazy; sort yourself, sort your friends, sort your favorite celebs based on quotes they've said in the past.
Unlike the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter books, this one doesn't sing songs of warning about Voldemort's return (although there was a poetic Twitter bot Sorting Hat that would tweet you rhymes). Nonetheless, it's a win for Potter fans. We can finally put to rest the very important question of where in Hogwarts we would really belong.
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