AllThingsD » Carl Bialik

Computers Can See You -- If You Have a Mug Shot

Carl Bialik — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:30:22 +0000

When rioters wreaked havoc on some U.K. cities last month, police deployed facial-recognition technology to try to identify some of the participants. But many experts say the software isn’t yet good enough to be of much use in interpreting grainy security footage, despite a recent study that suggested facial-recognition software is highly accurate in controlled settings.

Facial-recognition software is controversial. When Facebook Inc. began using the technology to automatically suggest tags for people in photos on the social-networking site, some users were outraged at what they viewed as a potential invasion of privacy. Some also worried about the potential for misidentifying people, especially in photos where subjects aren’t facing the camera head-on.

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Wi-Fi Threat to Trees Rooted in Shaky Stats

Carl Bialik — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 00:17:46 +0000

Recent headlines in international newspapers, on television news and in technology blogs highlighted a startling statistic from the Netherlands—70 percent of urban trees are sick, up from 10 percent a few years earlier. Coupled with a second recent Dutch study that found trees exposed to Wi-Fi transmitters suffered damage to their leaves, the number painted an alarming picture of city maples and oaks withering and dying from exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

But statisticians, urban foresters and even the researchers themselves say it is too soon to declare an urban tree epidemic, let alone to blame Wi-Fi. The Dutch tree figures are from a study of 600 trees in one small city this year, and the apparent jump in tree illness is based on a misleading comparison.

Meanwhile, the study linking leaf damage to Wi-Fi is so preliminary that it hasn’t been written up, let alone peer-reviewed and published in an academic journal.

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Rise and Flaw of Internet's Election-Fraud Hunters

Carl Bialik — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:47 +0000

Protesters on the streets of Tehran questioning the recent Iranian presidential election results have gotten support from a new breed of election watchers: Internet-enabled anomaly hounds who say the numbers don’t add up.

Fraud hunters are no newer to elections than conspiracy theorists are to the Internet. But unlike election monitors seeking voter tampering or intimidation, or local experts who critique faulty ballot design or study pre-election polling data, these statistical analysts don’t need to know anything about the dynamics of an individual race. Their toolkit is primarily statistical and can be applied to any numbers, voting or otherwise. The Internet provides quick access to election numbers and speedy dissemination of findings.

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Behind Sexting Survey, Debate Over How to Poll Teens

Carl Bialik — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:34:23 +0000

It seemed like more troubling evidence that kids these days engage in behavior they wouldn't want to write home about. Researchers recently found that one in five teenagers have shared nude or seminude photos of themselves by cellphone or online. That statistic has become a fixture in articles about "sexting" and its social and legal implications. But that number may be inflated, because the same teenagers who have engaged in such behavior could be the ones most likely to say they have done so in an online poll.