Gender discrimination and prediction on the basis of facial metric information

Horizontal and vertical facial measurements are statistically independent. Discriminant analysis shows that five of such normalized distances explain over 95% of the gender differences of 'training' samples and predict the gender of 90% novel test faces exhibiting various facial expressions. The robustness of the method and its results are assessed. It is argued that these distances (termed fiducial) are compatible with those found experimentally by psychophysical and neurophysiological studies. In consequence, partial explanations for the effects observed in these experiments can be found in the intrinsic statistical nature of the facial stimuli used.