Archive for the 'FACS' Category

Three Face Reading Tips

November 15th, 2007

(This post is part 2 in my series about the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), a system for classifying facial movements. Here is part 1, for those who missed it.)

Quick overview: FACS is a system developed by psychologists Paul Ekman and Wally Friesen, using the notion of individual Action Units (AUs) to identify and classify someone’s facial motions. The technique can be applied to both film and photographs, though photographs are usually much easier to code, for obvious reasons. People training in FACS use both media in training, as well as trying to make all the AUs …

Face Value

October 4th, 2007

I’ve been playing poker since I was little, though much less in recent years. To give you an idea of just HOW long, my parents divorced when I was nine, and the first day my dad left to go to his own apartment he handed my brother and I both a deck of cards. Thankfully he was back the next day (he would visit daily for many years), but the gift was symbolic.

Playing card games of all kinds is something of a tradition in our family, and something I think we’re pretty good at. And one of …