Chernoff Faces (in Java)

The Faces

The applets above display Chernoff faces that are described by ten facial characteristic parameters: head eccentricity, eye eccentricity, pupil size, eyebrow slant, nose size, mouth shape, eye spacing, eye size, mouth length and degree of mouth opening. Each parameter is represented by a number between 0 and 1.

Face 1 above represents the vector [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0].

Face 2 continuously animates transitions between randomly chosen faces.

Face 3 represents the vector [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1].

Faces 4, 5 and 6 are random. They will (perhaps) be different every time you look at this page.

The code for drawing the faces is based on the code in the book Computers, Pattern, Chaos and Beauty by Clifford Pickover.

The Code

• ChernoffFaceApplet.java
• ChernoffFacePainter.java
• Animation.java

Other Resources

• Examples of other "glyphs" used to display high dimensional datasets.
• An Investigation of Chernoff Faces for High Dimensional Data Exploration by David Marchette.
• Chernoff Faces Java applet, C code and screensaver by Steve Champeon.
• A program in the Icon language to draw Chernoff Faces, by Jon Lipp.
• If you really want to abuse your browser, try this page. Caution: This will quite possibly crash your machine.