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SESK: Stuff Everyone Should Know · sesk.info/ai-word2vec-king-queen

In word2vec, what is vector(King) minus vector(Man) plus vector(Woman) closest to?

Queen. Word vectors capture relationships as directions.

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  1. Queen ✔
  2. Prince
  3. Woman

Why: Word embeddings place words as points in space, and consistent relationships like male to female become similar directions. Simple vector math on them can solve analogies.

Huh, didn't know that: The 2013 word2vec paper learned high quality word vectors from 1.6 billion words in less than a day.

The dad joke
I tried word vector math on my family. Dad minus coffee plus nap equals Grandpa.
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References

Answer: Queen. Word embeddings place words as points in space, and consistent relationships like male to female become similar directions. Simple vector math on them can solve analogies.

  1. Mikolov et al., Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Space (arXiv 1301.3781) arxiv.org/pdf/1301.3781
    vector("King") - vector("Man") + vector("Woman") results in a vector that is closest to the vector representation of the word Queen
    Checked 2026-10-10.

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