Pi-Consulting

American teenagers want to do their bit for good causes, and one way is the “cut-a-thon”, growing your hair long, getting it all cut off and giving it to charity. Trouble is, the result can be a mountain of hair that no-one can use. Locks of Love, the leading US charity of its type, reports ruefully that around 80% of the hair they receive as donations is unusable for making wigs. Despite circulating clear guidelines, they get hair which is too short, too wet, too processed or flecked with gray. It mostly goes in the trash, rather than becoming wigs for cancer sufferers or patients with hair-destroying immune deficiencies. The charity’s leaders muse that the whole thing may be more about donors getting “a warm, fuzzy feeling” than the reality of actually helping people. The hair-donors? “They get the attention. They get so much out of it. Actually, a check would be easier”. Source: New York Times.

Anglo-Dutch food giant Unilever wanted to find out not only if their products made people happy, but HOW happy. Enter Visual Recognition, an Amsterdam-based computer innovation lab attached to Amsterdam University. VR’s technology and software is geared to reading facial expressions and translating them into mathematical measures of satisfaction. The system works by creating a 3-D facial map that tracks shifts in twelve key areas of muscle-movement. The result is a consistent and accurate register of emotions such as sadness, distaste, surprise and – of course – happiness. A panel of 300 women (more facially expressive than their men-folk, apparently) were recorded while eating different kinds of ice-cream, confectionery and fruit. 87% registered apples as ‘neutral’, yoghurt was ‘sad’ for 28% if the sample, and healthy-option ice-creams scored fewer smiling faces than their full-fat equivalents. Wait. Didn’t we kind of know that already? Source: mrweb.com, WARC, Pi.