Sampling Design For Face Recognition

A face recognition system consists of two integrated parts: One is the face recognition algorithm, the other is the selected classifier and derived features by the algorithm from a data set. The face recognition algorithm definitely plays a central role, but this paper does not aim at evaluating the algorithm, but deriving the best features for this algorithm from a specific database through sampling design of the training set, which directs how the sample should be collected and dictates the sample space. Sampling design can help exert the full potential of the face recognition algorithm without overhaul. Conventional statistical analysis usually assume some distribution to draw the inference, but the design-based inference does not assume any distribution of the data and it does not assume the independency between the sample observations. The simulations illustrates that the systematic sampling scheme performs better than the simple random sampling scheme, and the systematic sampling is comparable to using all available training images in recognition performance. Meanwhile the sampling schemes can save the system resources and alleviate the overfitting problem. However, the post stratification by sex is not shown to be significant in improving the recognition performance.