Comments on: Computers Exploit Human Brainpower to Decipher Faded Texts

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:22:13 +0000

@ov3rclock,

If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, then that doesn’t work. If you accept the OCR engine’s result of a valid word, you miss the possibility that it made a mistake that still comes out as a real word. You might say that’s an acceptable risk, but these are known dirty documents with high error rates anyways.

Even running the result through a grammer checker doesn’t always fix problems, though it certainly does help. Every additional cross-check helps. However nothing replaces the human being for best quality.

I just performed an OCR job and the result was OK but not great. It consistently mis-recognized “S” as “N”. For instance, the word “this” was repeatedly recognized as “thin”. You wouldn’t think the letters could be confused, but they were and the result was still a valid word. Even at the phrase level the language still made some type of sense, as “this interface” became “thin interface”.

By: ov3rcl0ck

ov3rcl0ck — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:17:11 +0000

Shouldn’t they have it run characters that are 75% or so readable into a dictionary to find the most logical words then out of the list take the less readable characters and find the most suitable word, so you don’t end up with words like “niss” and “pntkm”?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:46:47 +0000

“Um? shouldn?t that be “This aged portion of society was”? Haha.”

In most cases, since the subject of the sentence would be portion, then the correctly conjugated form would be “was” as that would agree in number with the subject. However, one thing that seems to have escaped attention would be the use of the subjunctive instead of the indicative. For example, when positing “If I were a grammar-nazi,” “were” is the correct form and not “was” even though the subject (”I”) is singular. I am not saying that this is the particular case here, but that it is a possibility…another would be that the author was bereft of grammar knowledge in the first place.

By: Rich

Rich — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:28:31 +0000

If I’d known I was helping the NYT i would have lied!

By: Fat Jolly Penguin

Fat Jolly Penguin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:39:17 +0000

““Um… shouldn’t that be “This aged portion of society was”? Haha.”

It can be either. Haha.”

Actually, it should be “was.” The subject of the sentence is “portion.”

By: komatzu

komatzu — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:59:11 +0000

@thomas: thanks for the answer!
I think it should have been mentioned in the article.

By: thomas

thomas — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:21:29 +0000

Here’s how they do it (From the website):

“But if a computer can’t read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here’s how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.”

Very cool idea.

By: Jerome

Jerome — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:09:33 +0000

Yes, that’s not clear to me either… if I’m deciphering the word, how does the program know what is correct?

By: Hank Roberts

Hank Roberts — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 01:09:24 +0000

When all else fails, read the fine manual:

http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html

“how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here’s how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.”

By: Fabrizio

Fabrizio — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:47:34 +0000

Andrei Broder was the first to invent a CAPTCHA when at Altavista and not Luis von Ahn

By: Ron Delta

Ron Delta — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:41:08 +0000

Wow dude, thsoe folks are pretty amazing arent they. Very smart bunch.

RD
http://www.anondo.alturl.com

By: rprebel

rprebel — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:17:01 +0000

It sounds like CAPTCHAs, for the commenter, aren’t new words at all. When I type ’suffolk’ and ‘chiffon’ into the little box below this bigger box, I’m not helping to decipher anything. I’m placing a vote in an election that’s already been decided. They’re also annoying, but spam is moreso.

By: Jmar

Jmar — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:12:16 +0000

I do not understand how this would work for “new words”, yet to be deciphered. Above someone suggested it sent the word to multiple people… does the first person have to wait until enough people verify? Haha. All my experence with this CAPTCHA has been instant either correct or incorrect, from my understanding it’s asking me to verify, not decipher. Am I just not getting a “new word” or what?

By: ayeroxor

ayeroxor — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:07:38 +0000

“Um… shouldn’t that be “This aged portion of society was”? Haha.”

It can be either. Haha.

By: Grimmygrim

Grimmygrim — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:01:43 +0000

Portion is singular so “was” would be correct. Using “was” or “were” would depend on the context (are they talking about the portion or the society). I’m leaning towards “was”.