Preliminary Steps in the Design of Optical Character Recognition Algorithms,

Previous publications have described a theory and techniques for designing optical character recognition algorithms using psychophysical methodology, focusing on the methodology used to determine Physical to Functional Rules PFRs. The present paper describes important preliminary steps that precede the psychological experiments, including the choice of an appropriate letter pair for study, the formation of a hypothesis regarding relevant attributes that distinguish the letters of the pair, and the design of stimuli for the subsequent psychophysical experiments. These steps are described in the context of the problem of designing an algorithm for recognizing handprinted 2s from handprinted Zs. Author