The Visual Representation of High Dimension Spaces
Our brains struggle visualizing spaces with more than 3 dimensions. This is a problem we tried to address in our FaceCloud and FaceField projects. We present here a possible solution using fractional dimensions to represent higher dimensions. The examples here are all based on the Eigenfaces face recognition algorithm where we were dealing with high…
Face Field Update
10 Synthetic Faces are now on display at the Chicago Cultural Center through August, as part of Adelheid Mers’ “Enter the Matrix” exhibit. They look great in large format and are quite powerful. Some photos below. These are faces pulled at random from the 60-dimensional PCA space that we have been working with for some…
Formula Toy
Back at the age of 17, thanks to the liberal access policies of Indiana University’s Wrubel Computing Center, I was able to write short little computer programs (on cards!) that would graph 3 dimensional surfaces using a pen plotter. The little nerd that was me was thrilled at the results, and my bedroom wall was…
The Hairy Blob, 800 Ping Pong Balls, and a Mindstorms RoboCam
The Hairy Blob: At the Hairy Blob exhibition at the Hyde Park Art Center last spring, visitors were invited to draw an image of time on a ping pong ball and toss it into a net that was suspended from the ceiling. 800 Ping Pong Balls: What to do with over 800 ping…
Anti-Face Model Specification and Calculation Details
Update 10/2013: We have implemented this in a free iPhone app which is available here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/anti-face/id690376775 Our site FaceField.org (and now the iPhone app) uses the EigenFaces methodology as implemented in Open CV to calculate a special kind of face that we have labelled an ‘Anti Face’. Model specification: – Over 1000 faces were…
Visualizing Factors and Prime Factorization.
Update 8/2014: The calculator discussed below is also available in the Chrome store here (for free of course). I’ve previously discussed Brent Yorgey’s factor diagrams. As the father of a 6 year old, I’ve found they are a great way to introduce the concepts of primes and factorization. Since then, I dabbled with the javascript…
Factor Dominoes
Many have discovered Brent Yorgey’s very cool factorization diagrams. They seem like a great way to teach multiplication and factorization to children. We also were excited by the domino game suggested by Malke Rosenfeld on her blog and decided to try to take her ideas and see if we could create viable game that also…
Constrain Face Detection for Better Face Recognition
Getting good results with PCA-based facial recognition algorithms depends on correcting for differences in lighting and alignment between the faces. Widely used techniques for correcting for lighting include using histogram equalization or discarding the first eigen vector. Techniques for correcting for alignment differences often involve locating facial features such as the eyes and then rotating…
Face Recognition System Design Considerations
Building a face recognition algorithm involves a whole string of design decisions, each of which will impact how well the system can identify faces. Here is a partial list of these decisions (*): – Choice of faces used to train the detection algo. Note that both a positive and negative set is needed. In other…
