“Beauty,” goes the old saying, “is in the eye of the beholder.” But does the beholder have to be human?

Not necessarily, say scientists at Tel Aviv University. Amit Kagian, an
M.Sc. graduate from the TAU School of Computer Sciences, has
successfully “taught” a computer how to interpret attractiveness in
women.

<blockquote>The notion that beauty can be boiled down to binary data and
interpreted by a mathematical model is nothing new. More than 2,000
years ago the Greek mystic, philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras
observed the connection between math, geometry and beauty. He reasoned
that features of physical objects corresponding to the “golden ratio”
were considered most attractive.

“I know that Plato connected the good to the beautiful,” says Kagian.
“Personally, I believe that some kind of universal correctness to
beauty exists in nature, an aesthetic interpretation of the universal
truth. But because each of us is trapped with our own human biases and
personalized viewpoints, this may detract us from finding the ultimate
formula to a complete understanding of beauty.”</blockquote>

http://www.aftau.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6829