ChatterBaby is an app that uses math to compare your baby's sounds to a database of roughly 1,500 sounds to determine whether and why your infant cries. The algorithm assumes the baby is crying for only three reasons: hungry, fussy, and pain. It correctly identifies roughly 85% of pain cries and is roughly 90% accurate for catching any baby cries. Fussy/whiny cries are the cries most often mistaken for non-crying. The less background noise is present, the better the algorithm will work.

The ChatterBaby algorithm is not a medical device. Your brain and your own intuition are far more powerful than the fanciest equations. If the ChatterBaby algorithm and your own common sense disagree, always trust your brain. The app stores your data for science on a server that is HIPAA-compliant, removing as much information as possible that links your data to you individually. Odds are, a human being will never actually hear your baby’s audio sample; a computer script will run some math on it and throw the answers in a big spreadsheet to do even more math.

There is no warranty for ChatterBaby. The app is not designed for remote monitoring. The algorithm assumes the baby is crying for only three reasons: hungry, fussy, and pain. If your baby is crying because he really, really, wants to taste some Legos and you just won’t let him, it will not work. Sad fact: separation anxiety cries are predicted as “pain” by our algorithm. The less background noise is present, the better the algorithm will work. If you feed it a soundclip of you singing to your crying baby, it will not work. If you feed ChatterBaby a soundclip of your dog barking, it will not work.