On 1/16/2016 11:06 AM, Ken Cito wrote:
1. When they give the two words, why is one easy and the other impossible?
Wouldn't a single impossible work work as well?
What's the reason for the easy word?

2. When they give the house numbers, how do they know you're right?
Are they using us to farm out the job of figuring out the numbers?
What do they "do" with the numbers if that's the case.
Or, does someone already tell them what the number is first?
But, if that's the case, ANY number would work (not just house numbers).

What's going on?

Think about it. If they can examine all the RAW VIDEO coming in
from their roving drones to *isolate* the house number, do you
really think they can't figure out what the number *is*?
How do they know where the number is located on the property?
On the house? Mailbox? Curb? etc. Do they show you a picture of
a HOUSE and tell YOU to find the number -- and tell them what
it is??

Recognizing digits is relatively trivial. The post office
recognizes HAND PRINTED zip codes on mail FLYING past a
camera at a high rate of speed. Surely, recognizing STORE
BOUGHT digits (that THEY have already "located") is a piece
of cake! Especially for a firm that has THOUSANDS of
computers available to do that work!

Note that they also have some clues as to what valid responses
(for THEIR recognizer algorithms) are likely to be. I suspect
they already have a database that tells them the street
numbers at each cross street. So, they know the upper and
lower limits on the numbers between any two intersections.

Additionally, they have *some* idea of the number for the
house immediately "before" and "after" the house in question.
If the previous is "5" and the next is "15", then it's probably a safe
bet to assume the current house is NOT "23" but, rather "13"!
And, as numbers tend to be odd/even (alternate sides of the
street), you can bet it's "13" and not "12"!

A more interesting challenge would be to see how "13-1/2" would
be handled. Or, "27B".

When Kurzweil created the "Data Entry System", an "operator"
monitored an image of the text that was being scanned. So,
if the algorithms were unsure of their results, they could
highlight the portion of the image and ask the operator
for clarification. This may be how (relatively RARE)
exceptions like "13-1/2" are handled!