When Enough Is Enough: Early Stopping of Biometrics Error Rate Testing

Testing of biometric devices to determine whether or not their error rates meet a specified threshold is often an important criterion for determining whether or not a device will be deployed. One consideration for this is how much testing is to be completed. This paper applies sequential testing methodology to testing whether or not a biometric device has an error rate below a certain bound. This approach has the advantage that the testing can be stopped at any time. A decision can be made once there is enough evidence to support or reject the hypothesis of interest.