A novel learning approach for human face detection using a network of linear units is presented. The SNoW learning architecture is a sparse network of linear functions over a pre-dened or incrementally learned feature space and is specically tailored for learning in the presence of a very large number of features. A wide range of face images in dierent poses, with dierent expressions and under dierent lighting conditions are used as a training set to capture the variations of human faces. Experimental results on commonly used benchmark data sets of a wide range of face images show that the SNoW-based approach outperforms methods that use neural networks, Bayesian methods, support vector machines and others. Furthermore, learning and evaluation using the SNoW-based method are signicantly more ecient than with other methods.