Nic Svenson

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Nic Svenson from CSIRO Industrial Physics first presented her ground-breaking research into probabilities of producing photographs without people blinking on The Science Show in May 2006. This work earned Nic and co-researcher Piers Barnes the Ig Nobel Mathematics Prize. ^[1] (The Ig Nobels are a spoof of the Nobel Awards and given for work/research that should not have been done in the first place and/or should not be repeated again).

[edit] Their Findings

The probability of one person spoiling a photo by blinking equals their expected number of blinks (x), multiplied by the time during which the photo could be spoilt (t) - if the expected time between blinks is longer than the time in which a photo can be spoilt.

This makes the probability of one person not blinking 1 - xt. For two people it's (1 - xt).(1 - xt) and for a group of people it's (1 - xt)ⁿ, n being the number of people. This means (1 - xt)ⁿ is also the probability of a good photo. Therefore, the number of photos should be 1/(1 - xt)ⁿ.

Where the average number of blinks made by someone getting their photo taken is ten per minute and the average blink lasts about 250 milliseconds and, in good indoor light, a camera shutter stays open for about eight milliseconds.

As a rule of thumb Barnes advises, "For groups of less than 20: divide the number of people by three if there's good light and two if the light's bad." ^[2]