Knickerbocker Photo (Update)

[SteveS]

Scott, thank you very much for those suggestions! I've actually done both of those things. The HOF replied that they weren't allowed to authenticate photos, and provided a list of authentication services. I sent it to SABR people awhile back before I sharpened the pictures and had firmer IDs. One person thought it could be them, and one didn't. Perhaps I'll submit it again with the more recent info.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by SteveS

Scott, thank you very much for those suggestions! I've actually done both of those things. The HOF replied that they weren't allowed to authenticate photos, and provided a list of authentication services. I sent it to SABR people awhile back before I sharpened the pictures and had firmer IDs. One person thought it could be them, and one didn't. Perhaps I'll submit it again with the more recent info.

The HOF misunderstood what you were asking then. You weren't asking for authentication but help with identification. They have helped me in the past.

Oh, and this was my 5000th post!

[SteveS]

Scott, I am truly honored that your 5,000th post came within my thread, and I will try again with the HOF and make it clearer this time.

[molenick]

Originally Posted by Snowman

We're not quite saying the same thing. Your math is correct if the question is phrased as "what is the probability that all 6 men are indeed a match for the 6 people Steve thinks they are?"

But that's not quite the same question I was answering above. If this is indeed a Knickerbockers photo, then the subjects in the photo are not independent of one another (independent in the statistical sense). In other words, if one of them is indeed a Knickerbocker, then that increases the likelihood that a second person is also a Knickerbocker. And if 2 are known to be Knickerbockers, then again, it increases the likelihood that a 3rd is, etc. Knickerbockers are likely to be photographed together. So my framing of the question "what are the odds that this is a Knickerbockers photo?" approaches it with that dependence structure in mind. It basically calculates what the odds are of all of his 90% Knickerbocker matches to be wrong rather than what the odds are for each one to be correct independently. My approach allows for, say, 5 of his 6 matches to be correct but him mistaking the identity of the 6th one, thus still making the photo a "Knickerbockers" photo.

I spoke to my son who is better at math than I am and he started talking about Bayesian probability and I kind of lost him halfway through.

But I think his point was that knowing one person was 100% a Knickerbocker does indeed affect the probability that the others are Knickerbockers…the problem is we don’t know how it affects the probability. For example, if we knew for a fact that this one person only had his photo taken with other Knickerbockers (and never had a photo taken with family members, business associates, friends, or anyone else, ever) that would affect it in a very positive way…the other people would all have to be Knickerbockers. But if we knew this person was estranged from the other members and refused to be photographed with them, that would affect it in a negative way...the other people could not be Knickerbockers. We would essentially need to know the universe of all the photos this person was in and what percentage of these photos contained only Knickerbockers. Seeing as how we don't know how often/rarely they got photographed together, the odds are still based on these being independent occurrences at 90% per person.

However, if one person was 100% a Knickerbocker, it does help in the fact that the odds have increased from 0.9^6 = 53% to 0.9^5 or 59% that all of them are Knickerbockers.

For the purposes of the above, I am assuming the 90% number to be accurate and that I am correctly conveying what I understood from what my son was telling me.

[SteveS]

Thank you, Michael, for that very thorough and helpful analysis! I just want to stress again that I am not relying on facial-match programs, no matter how high the results. I don't think they've reached the level of acceptability where what they say is taken by everybody as gold. I am looking at each facial feature with my own eyes and determining where there are matches. And while I know that some people disagree with me, I see enough matches, especially among their unique features, to convince me that they are Knickerbockers. One thing that I find interesting is that of the people who disagree with me, not one has pointed to a feature in any of the men that stands out as a complete and obvious non-match to the comparison. It's just a general, "I don't see the resemblances." What I would like to see is if somebody can say something like, "So-and-So has a giant wart on his nose which is not there in the comparison pic" (or whatever, some other blatantly obvious difference). I can (and have briefly above) point out the numerous similarities. So I don't know what or who, if anything or anybody, will be able to convince those who just don't see it.