Can anyone tell me what is smartscore? How did they categorized us?

Question

anonymous · Answer

Currently, the SmartScore is being field-tested. You can probably expect your score to change dramatically over the course of the next few days, and will probably level out in a week or so. Here's an (early) explanation of your SmartScore: http://blog.openstudy.com/2012/04/09/to-boldly-go-where-no-grades-have-gone-before/

anonymous · Answer

If you click on your SmartScore, you'll see the attributes we score you on :)

directrix · Answer

@Laura --> Who is "we?" Is than a human judging component in the SmartScore computer algorithm?

anonymous · Answer

@Directrix, make sure you don't forget my *. Laura is a totally different user from @Laura* :)

We=OpenStudy as the site. The algorithm is made by humans, and we chose the attributes and the weights.

directrix · Answer

@Laura*  --> Thanks for the heads up that Laura and * are not commutative. lol
I must confess that I do not know Star Laura from Laura Star but I do get the significance of the star placement.

I get that the SmartScore algorithm is written by humans. My question is how an algorithm measures "passion" and "personality" without human intervention/interpretation after the algorithm has done its number crunching.

Just think of me as a star-free geek but not a gearhead. The intersection of qualitative attributes and numerical ones and the quantification thereof escapes me.