ESPN does "Biometrics"

ESPN does "Biometrics" and the results leave the ten or twenty, or so, of us who believe that a heart monitor isn't a biometric device a little disappointed.

Indeed, it appears we are losing the great Biometrics vs. Biostatistics debate. Back in 2011, we made the case for distinguishing between biometrics and biostatistics as follows.

Biometric = body measure.

Biostatistic = body status, state, or condition.


Biometrics for identity management concern facts about the physical human body that don't change (or don't change much) over time.

Biostatistics, on the other hand, are useful precisely because they change, sometimes radically over short or long time-frames.

ESPN provides the latest evidence that our plea has fallen upon deaf ears in New biometric tests invade the NBA.

But what might come as a surprise is how significant that explosion has been, and how far its blast radius might soon reach. The literary specter haunting sports' burgeoning Information Age is no longer Michael Lewis and Moneyball but George Orwell and 1984.

The boom officially began during work hours. Before last season, all 30 arenas installed sets of six military-grade cameras, built by a firm called SportVU, to record the x- and y-coordinates of every person on the court at a rate of 25 times a second -- a technology originally developed for missile defense in Israel. This past spring, SportVU partnered with Catapult, an Australian company that produces wearable GPS trackers that can gauge fatigue levels during physical activity. Catapult counts a baker's dozen of NBA clients, including the exhaustion-conscious Spurs, and claims Mavericks owner Mark Cuban as both a customer and investor. To front offices, the upside of such devices is rather obvious: Players, like Formula One cars, are luxury machines that perform best if vigilantly monitored, regulated and rested.

But to follow this logic to its conclusion is to understand why the scope of this monitoring is expanding, and faster than the public knows. Teams have always intuited that on-court productivity could be undermined by off-court choices -- how a player exhausts himself after hours, for instance, or what he eats and drinks. Now the race is on to comprehensively surveil and quantify that behavior.

It's possible that some employers have delusions tending rather to Big Brother. The article linked here, however, has nothing to do with biometrics as we discuss them here: as identity management tools.


Also...
The headline writer's passive voice has "biometric tests"ex nihilo "invading" the NBA. Tests and monitoring, biometric or otherwise, can't assert themselves. Technology, biometric or otherwise, is about people.

'Cause it's Friday... [Update: Hoax alert]

UPDATE:
The LIVR Hoax: Everybody's Favorite New Drunkbro App Is Fake (Gizmodo)

April Fool's Day keeps getting earlier and earlier.


What if your social network would ONLY let you post when drunk? (Irish Independent)

Thanks to the help of a mini-breathalyser that plugs in to your smartphone, Livr (it rhymes with ‘river’, yes, like the organ) will only be accessible if users’ blood alcohol content scores above a certain, as-yet-undetermined level.

Once users have made their way past this “biometric bouncer” they’ll get access to a number of features designed especially for those who have had - in the words of founders Kyle Addison and Avery Platz - “a couple of drinks.”

This is both fun and horrifying, but I can see how it might be socially beneficial.

Boss: I saw your off-color comments about the management culture around here.
Staffer: Oh, that doesn't really count, it was on Livr.
Boss: OK, then.

But just to set the record straight blood alcohol level, except in a few very rare circumstances, isn't really a biometric in the way we frequently use the term.

See: Biometrics vs. Biostatistics.

Short version:
Biometrics for identity management concern facts about the physical human body that don't change (or don't change much) over time.
Biostatistics, on the other hand, are useful precisely because they change, sometimes radically over short or long time-frames.

Biometrics and Biostatistics Revisited

[UPDATE: An uptick in recent articles like this one made me want to revisit this post. A quote from the article:

Ford showed off a prototype of this future health system, developed by BlueMetal Architects, at CES. The system will be able to capture biometric data from devices such as pacemakers and glucose monitors, and will also be able to accept voice input from the driver [emph. mine].

Maybe the term "biometrics" has a marketing cachet that "biostatistics" lacks; maybe for reasons of economy, journalists prefer to save ink, pixels, space and keystrokes. Whatever the reason, "biometrics" is a term that gets applied to every new application where technology is used to monitor or measure some aspect of the human body, its condition, motion or position. In being used to describe so many different things, "biometrics" has lost a great deal of precision of meaning.

DARPA has come up with another set of applications that some will be tempted to call biometrics (though DARPA doesn't call them that). DARPA is interested in collecting behavior metrics they call “cognitive fingerprints” or “human secrets” in order to develop an identity assurance model that relies on constant monitoring of an individual's unique behaviors while interacting with computer hardware.

Since...

Acta exteriora indicant interiora secreta; External actions indicate internal secrets

...maybe "actametrics" is a decent term for what DARPA's up to.

But you can see why (over)use of the term "biometrics" is so tempting. In this case, “cognitive fingerprint” and "human secret" is even more confusing than overusing "biometrics," and the folks at DARPA are geniuses that probably know their Latin scientific terms very well.

The original post, with minor edits, follows...]

We've danced around this topic a couple of times in the past (see links at the end of this post).

Biometrics and Biostatistics, the difference is subtle.

Biometric = body measure.
Biostatistic = body status, state, or condition.

[I'm no Latin scholar so I don't want to go to the mat for these definitions, but keeping them in mind helps me make sense of things when I read about all the uses for "biometrics" in health care and the health insurance industry. If there are any Latin (language) scholars out there who have interest and insight into this question, I'd love to hear from them.]

Biometrics for identity management concern facts about the physical human body that don't change (or don't change much) over time.

Biostatistics, on the other hand, are useful precisely because they change, sometimes radically over short or long time-frames.

Health care uses both biometrics and biostatistics. Health care providers use biometrics such as fingerprint and iris scanners for patient records management and logical and physical access control. They use biostatistics such as heart rate, weight, and EEG's, etc. for diagnostics, monitoring progress and assessing outcomes.

The Security sector is also seeking ways to use quantitative biostatistics to achieve better outcomes. I added the "quantitative" modifier because in many ways human beings have used non-quantified biostatistics (observations of behavior, for example) for security purposes since, well, forever. For example, we all know what someone means when they say that someone else was "acting suspiciously" or "looked guilty".

The computerized, measurement of biostatistics for security purposes, is at least as old as lie detectors. The novelty described by the article linked below is in bringing lie detectors out of the rigorously controlled laboratory environment and into more chaotic situations.

Face-reading lie detectors to be tested at UK airports (Airport-Technology.com)

The dual cameras in the system observe changes in facial expression and blood flow, with the first camera spotting signs of deceit such as lip-biting, nose-wrinkling, blinking and Freudian slips, and the second thermal imaging camera measuring flushing and blood-flow patterns around the eyes.

See also:
Behavioral Biometrics or Public Lie Detectors?
Mal-intent may be the future of security

Biometrics vs. Biostatistics

[UPDATE: An uptick in recent articles like this one made me want to revisit this post. A quote from the article:

Ford showed off a prototype of this future health system, developed by BlueMetal Architects, at CES. The system will be able to capture biometric data from devices such as pacemakers and glucose monitors, and will also be able to accept voice input from the driver [emph. mine].

Maybe the term "biometrics" has a marketing cachet that "biostatistics" lacks; maybe for reasons of economy, journalists preserve to save ink, pixels, space and keystrokes.

The original post follows...]

We've danced around this topic a couple of times in the past (see links at the end of this post).

Biometrics and Biostatistics, the difference is subtle.

Biometric = body measure.
Biostatistic = body status, state, or condition.

[I'm no Latin scholar so I don't want to go to the mat for these definitions, but keeping them in mind helps me make sense of things when I read about all the uses for "biometrics" in health care and the health insurance industry. If there are any Latin (language) scholars out there who have interest and insight into this question, I'd love to hear from them.]

Biometrics for identity management concern facts about the physical human body that don't change (or don't change much) over time.

Biostatistics, on the other hand, are useful precisely because they change, sometimes radically over short or long time-frames.

Health care uses both biometrics and biostatistics. Health care providers use biometrics such as fingerprint and iris scanners for patient records management and logical and physical access control. They use biostatistics such as heart rate, weight, and EEG's, etc. for diagnostics, monitoring progress and assessing outcomes.

The Security sector is also seeking ways to use quantitative biostatistics to achieve better outcomes. I added the "quantitative" modifier because in many ways human beings have used non-quantified biostatistics (observations of behavior, for example) for security purposes since, well, forever. We all know what someone means when they say that someone else was "acting suspiciously".

The computerized, measurement of biostatistics for security purposes, is at least as old as lie detectors. The novelty described by the article linked below is in bringing lie detectors out of the rigorously controlled laboratory environment and into more chaotic situations.

Face-reading lie detectors to be tested at UK airports (Airport-Technology.com)

The dual cameras in the system observe changes in facial expression and blood flow, with the first camera spotting signs of deceit such as lip-biting, nose-wrinkling, blinking and Freudian slips, and the second thermal imaging camera measuring flushing and blood-flow patterns around the eyes.

See also:
Behavioral Biometrics or Public Lie Detectors?
Mal-intent may be the future of security