Sample Exercises

Chapter 1: Introduction
1. What is the difference between a biometric system operating in the following modes: (a) verification/authentication, (b) positive identification,
and (c) negative identification/ screening?
2. Explain the intra-class variability of a biometric trait. How does it affect
the performance of a biometric system?
3. What are the two main types of errors made by a biometric system? Explain the key performance metrics of a biometric system in (a) verification
mode and (b) identification mode.
4. What are wolves, goats, lambs and sheep in Doddingtons zoo? Explain
with examples. Why is it necessary to characterize biometric users in this
fashion?
5. Let p(s|genuine) N (70, 25) and p(s|impostor) N (50, 15) for a certain
biometric system, where N (, ) represents a Gaussian distribution with
mean and standard deviation . Suppose the following decision rule
is employed: Assign s to the genuine class if s > , else assign s to the
impostor class. Here, (, ).
(a) Plot these two distributions. If = 60, what is the FAR and FRR of
the biometric system?
(b) Report the EER and d-prime value based on these distributions (do
not use the ROC curve to compute the EER).
(c) Plot the ROC curve.
6. Table 1 provides the histograms of the genuine and impostor match (similarity) scores of a biometric matcher. The match scores range from 0 to
100.
(a) Plot the ROC curve of the matcher using the above data. Since you
are provided with histograms as opposed to continuous densities, you
are allowed to select matching score thresholds only in multiples of
10, starting with a value of 10.
(b) What is the EER of this matcher? At what threshold value is the
EER observed?

Table 1: Histogram of match scores.

Bins (Score range) Number of genuine Number of impostor
match scores
match scores
0-9
0
10
10-19
0
25
20-29
0
30
30-39
1
20
40-49
4
10
50-59
5
3
60-69
20
1
70-79
40
1
80-89
25
0
90-99
5
0

(c) What is the FAR at 1% FRR? What is the FRR at 1% FAR? Also,
specify the corresponding thresholds.
7. Entry tickets to a private club are controlled by the management team.
There are approximately 4000 members in this club. The ticketing system
works as shown in the block diagram in Figure 1. In this system, the
access control is managed through what you have (valid voucher and
valid ID card). So, any person who has both the ID card and the voucher
can gain access to the club. Let us assume that the management decides
to change the current system so that members need not carry any physical
entity (vouchers, ID cards, etc.) while coming to the club. However, in
order to prevent non-members from enjoying the privileges, management
decides to deploy a biometrics-based access control system. Currently,
all the management has is a single biometric acquisition device and the
corresponding matcher that requires 100 milliseconds to perform a single
biometric comparison.
(a) Based on the terminology defined in the book, modify the given block
diagram to incorporate a feasible real-time biometrics-based access
control into the above system. The only constraint is that members
must not carry any physical entity.
(b) What are the advantages of this new system compared to the existing
system? What are its limitations?
(c) You are given the ROC curve of the biometric matcher that management plans to use (see Figure 2), which has been divided into three
regions. In which region will you select the operating point for this
application and why?
(d) Which biometric trait do you think is most suitable for this application and why?
2

Figure 1: Ticketing system for club access.

Figure 2: ROC curve of the selected biometric matcher.