Doyce noted with some worry yesterday that computers are on the verge of being smarter than humans when it comes to chess. On the other hand, it may be a good thing that computers (or, more properly, software programs) are beginning to be more accurate than humans when it comes to spam.
The authors of two spam filters, CRM114 and DSPAM, announced recently that their filters have achieved accuracy rates ten times better than a human is capable of. Based on a study by Bill Yerazunis of CRM114, the average human is only 99.84% accurate. Both filters are reporting to have reached accuracy levels between 99.983% and 99.984% (1 misclassification in 6250 messages) using completely different approaches (CRM114 touts Markovan, while DSPAM implements a Dolby-type noise reduction algorithm called Dobly).
I’ll note that my own lowly Bayesian filter, POPfile, is currently running around 98.24% accurate (including its training period). I’m almost worried about getting a higher accuracy rate — much better, and I’d slack off in checking to see if there were any false positives, which might not be a good thing.
(via BoingBoing)