Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Deduction #6

Another two-for-one!



Number one - how do we know that these were taken by the same person? Just in case the lighting, decor, and wall coloring were not enough to convince you, we also have the metadata from the picture to confirm that the photos were taken at approximately the same time by the same phone (which by the way was an Iphone 5s) (See a fun little computer trick).

Another interesting thing about this picture's metadata is that it contains some very specific GPS data which supposedly marks the location the picture was taken. Unfortunately, plugging in the data verbatim yields a location somewhere is Kazakhstan, which worried me greatly as there was nothing in the pictures to suggest that as a viable location. In fact, the many English book titles along with the dollar bill attached to your desk might seem to suggest that you live in America. Further exploration of the metadata shows us that the pictures were taken at approximately 11:25 am, but submitted to Padlet about 3 hours prior at about 8:35. If we assume it took about 10 minutes for you to upload the pictures (which I feel is a reasonable assumption given all the data), then via this method we can safely say that you fall into the Eastern Time Zone.

Needless to say I was quite confused about your location. Especially after I noticed that the bottom left corner of your mathematics textbook on the desk. "Chapitre 3." Not a phrase you'd expect on the East Coast of the United States. But it did give me something to go on. Either the girl to whom this room belongs is home-schooled by french parents OR the language of the area in which she lives is French. If we assume the second, then certain parts of Canada meet 2 of the 3 location stipulations - must be in Eastern Time Zone, and must speak French and English fairly commonly. The only outlier seems to be the GPS coordinates. After considering the options, I decided that the balance of probability rested with the notion that somehow the GPS data must be wrong. So I set out to find out HOW wrong.

As it turns out, when Iphone pictures are transferred, either through certain apps or image editing software, the GPS data is altered, resulting in the + and - signs being cut off the front. For those of you unfamiliar with latitude and longitude measurements, the signs allows the reader to ascertain which hemisphere will be used. Without them, the numbers in the GPS field could refer to exactly 4 locations in the world. (++, --, +-, -+). After looking at the possible locations, I found that one of them is a house in Montreal.

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5,-73.8,10z

In the interest of not giving away this person's address, I've truncated the data so as not to deliver such a precise location.

Now onto the fun stuff.

Tentatively, I'm going to say we have a fairly well-rounded, bi-lingual, christian, right-handed female near her early teens with medium to long hair, living in an upper middle class household.

Well rounded based on the piano, soccer ball and packaged assumption that she's either a fan or a player (admittedly weak), and all of the books with titles in two languages (bi-lingual). The religious pictures on the top left part of the book shelf (combined with an over 80% Christian population in Montreal) says Christian. Right-handed because the notebook and pen are placed to the right of the textbook, and all of the writing utensils on the desk are to the right side. Female should be a pretty easy one at this point. We've got the shoe and dress on the desk shelf, various figurines on the bookshelf, and a hair clip on the desk top. Speaking of the hair clip - we can eliminate excessively short hair cuts as our subject would have little use for this type of clip. Upper middle class household based partly on the style of the bookshelves, the price of the matching sets of the various book series, and the local neighborhood property values (easier to find when you have the subject's location).

The only one I'm not super comfortable with is the age of the subject. I managed to find that textbook online, and it appears to be for cycle 1 of the secondary education program in Canada, which I believe equates to upper middle school/ early high school in the USA. In addition, the books on the shelf (the ones I recognize) are young adult titles (Ex: Hunger Games, Caster Chronicles). But something seems off. Either this room has been recently cleaned, the age of the subject is actually higher than I suspected, or this is one organized teenager.

My big question is this - "What is written on that dollar bill?"

If you have any questions, critiques, or violent disagreements, please comment or send me a message. If these are your pictures, please respond and let me know how I did, and be sure to clear up any mistakes I may have made.

3 comments:

  1. These are my pictures and you are correct about almost everything. These pictures were taken with my iPhone 5s and I submitted them a few minutes after I took them. I live in North America, and more precisely Montreal, Canada, so you were correct. The language of the area I live in is in fact French, and that is my first language (I speak French, English, Romanian and Spanish). I go to a French school and those were my math books from the past two years. They are currently on my desk because I am preparing myself for back to school. I love to learn new things and I started playing the piano a year ago and guitar a few weeks ago. The plush soccer ball (that I bought when I was around 9) was there because I was cleaning my room, found it in a box and didn’t know where to put it. I love reading, it is one of my favorite pass times and I mostly read in English, but I often need French books for school. I am Christian (orthodox) and the pictures on top of my shelf were given to me by one of my relatives from Romania. I am right-handed, but I also trained myself to write better than the average person with my left hand. I actually had my hair cut short recently and I use those clips to prevent my hair from going in my face when I read or write, since it is very distracting. I would consider myself to be in the Upper middle class. I turned 14 years old back in February. I am not extremely organised, but I try to clean my room at least once a week. My bookshelf is one of the parts of my room that I always keep organized. To answer your question, what is written on that dollar bill, that I kept from one of my trips in the US, is “I am a piece of paper and I control your entire life”. I saw a post on Tumblr and I thought it would be a good idea to make my own, so I did. (Back when I wrote that I didn’t know that US money was actually made out of cotton and linen whoops.)
    Thanks for analysing my room, I am very impressed on how accurate your deductions were. I just wanted to let you know that I’m a big fan of your blog (:

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  2. Female
    20's, no more than 25.
    College student
    Asian
    Travels, specifically has been to London
    My question: What is on the book shelf 2nd row, 1st cube. You blanked it out. I'll assume too personal of info.



    These were my assumptions before I read Kayden and Anon's posts. I was wrong. I feel that I have trouble picking up clues with young adults. Am I out of touch? No, it's the kids that are wrong. I also feel that pulling meta data from the picture is cheating. Of course you can tell she's in a middle class neighborhood when you look at google maps. I like to only make my guesses with what's in the photos.

    CH


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    Replies
    1. My response to you would be to ask you to justify all of your ideas. You seem to be picking up on some of the more relevant details, but I fear you may be extrapolating too far.

      Also, yes. Checking meta-data can be considered cheating, depending on how you play the game. I like to think of the meta-data as making up for the fact that I'm not actually present in the room where the picture was taken. I can use that to get a sense of where I am (something I would already have if I were actually there). I always try to confirm what I find using the extra data by referring to the picture. For example, the upper middle-class household bit could be deduced from the books. Notice that most if not all are the same style (either all paperback or all hard-bound) - more likely to have come from a set or be purchased at the same time. in addition, the furniture matches (something you are a lot less likely to see with a college kid) and is rather nice. The addition of other elements of the room (nicer lamp, rug, and various knick-knacks on the bookshelf) solidify the argument.

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