Individuality of numerals

The analysis of handwritten documents from the view-pointof determining their writership has great bearing onthe criminal justice system. In many cases, only a limitedamount of handwriting is available and sometimes it consistsof only numerals. Using a large number of handwrittennumeral images extracted from about 3000 samples writtenby 1000 writers, a study of the individuality of numerals foridentification/verification purposes was conducted. The individualityof numerals was studied using cluster analysis.Numerals discriminability was measured for writer verification.The study shows that some numerals present a higherdiscriminatory power and that their performances for theverification/identification tasks are very different.