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From: Rune Allnor <allnor@tele.ntnu.no>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: Gender detection
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 00:27:48 -0700 (PDT)
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On 2 Jul, 23:57, "Sprinceana " <mihai...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> My problem is now how can I determine if the person which I load the picture in axes component is a man or female.
>
> Any ideas of links or topics?

Pick up a book on art, on drawing or painting portraits.

Artists need to be aware of the characteristics that
separate male and female faces, like the proportions
of certain features, thickness of bone structures and
so on.

Just be aware that you are playing with deceptive
concepts. You might think that "heck, *I* can see
if that person is a male or a female, it should be
easy to have the computer do the discrimination".

What happens in reality is that you base the discrimunation
on the whole evolutionary history of Homo Sapiens.
The human brain is fine-tuned to size up every single
person you see:

- Male or female?
- Age?
- Physical health?
- Social status?
- Ethnical genealogy?
- State of mind?

From an evolutionary perspective, it is vital for everybody
to size other people up quickly. Those who don't tend to end
up in trouble. Or miss a potential spouse. So you will *always*
come up with characteristics like those above, if you have to.
They will not always be correct, but you will come up with
them nonetheless.

In other words, you might be trying to replicate decisions
that in real life are made deep down in the human brains,
based on very subtle clues.

Rune