Pattern Discrimination

How do “human” prejudices reemerge in algorithmic cultures allegedly devised to be blind to them? How do “human” prejudices reemerge in algorithmic cultures allegedly devised to be blind to them? To answer this question, this book investigates a fundamental axiom in computer science: pattern discrimination. By imposing identity on input data, in order to filter—that is, to discriminate—signals from noise, patterns become a highly political issue. Algorithmic identity politics reinstate old forms of social segregation, such as class, race, and gender, through defaults and paradigmatic assumptions about the homophilic nature of connection. Instead of providing a more “objective” basis of decision making, machine-learning algorithms deepen bias and further inscribe inequality into media. Yet pattern discrimination is an essential part of human—and nonhuman—cognition. Bringing together media thinkers and artists from the United States and Germany, this volume asks the urgent questions: How can we discriminate without being discriminatory? How can we filter information out of data without reinserting racist, sexist, and classist beliefs? How can we queer homophilic tendencies within digital cultures?

This book provides an in-depth and timely analysis of the member states' compliance patterns with the key European Union Anti-Discrimination Directives. It examines the various structural, administrative, and individual aspects which significantly affect the degree and the nature of compliance patterns in select European Union member states.

During the past fifteen years there has been a considerable growth of interest in problems of pattern recognition. Contributions to the blossom of this area have come from many disciplines, including statistics, psychology, linguistics, computer science, biology, taxonomy, switching theory, communication theory, control theory, and operations research. Many different approaches have been proposed and a number of books have been published. Most books published so far deal with the decision-theoretic (or statistical) approach or the syntactic (or linguistic) approach. Since the area of pattern recognition is still far from its maturity, many new research results, both in theory and in applications, are continuously produced. The purpose of this monograph is to provide a concise summary of the major recent developments in pattern recognition. The five main chapters (Chapter 2-6) in this book can be divided into two parts. The first three chapters concern primarily with basic techniques in pattern recognition. They include statistical techniques, clustering analysis and syntactic techniques. The last two chapters deal with applications; namely, picture recognition, and speech recognition and understanding. Each chapter is written by one or two distinguished experts on that subject. The editor has not attempted to impose upon the contributors to this volume a uniform notation and terminol ogy, since such notation and terminology does not as yet exist in pattern recognition.

First published in 1974. This book uses the basic idea of information as number of alternatives, and the concept of redundancy, but little else from formal information theory. It is a collection of eight lectures.

Terahertz biomedical imaging has become an area of interest due to its ability to simultaneously acquire both image and spectral information. Terahertz imaging systems are being commercialized, with increasing trials performed in a biomedical setting. As a result, advanced digital image processing algorithms are needed to assist screening, diagnosis, and treatment. "Pattern Recognition and Tomographic Reconstruction" presents these necessary algorithms, which will play a critical role in the accurate detection of abnormalities present in biomedical imaging. Terhazertz tomographic imaging and detection technology contributes to the ability to identify opaque objects with clear boundaries, and would be useful to both in vivo and ex vivo environments, making this book a must-read for anyone in the field of biomedical engineering and digital imaging.

A self-contained and coherent account of probabilistic techniques, covering: distance measures, kernel rules, nearest neighbour rules, Vapnik-Chervonenkis theory, parametric classification, and feature extraction. Each chapter concludes with problems and exercises to further the readers understanding. Both research workers and graduate students will benefit from this wide-ranging and up-to-date account of a fast- moving field.