Question for Duncan Campbell re: Word-Spotting Capabilities

[Pete Bentley]

At Tue, 03 Aug 1999 19:37:56 BST, Dave Bird writes:
>In article <199908031031.LAA02861@odin.mimir.com>, Pete Bentley
><pete@sorted.org> writes
>>Seems to me that topic spotting is a more useful goal anyway.  Even if 
>>you have 100% accuracy in word spotting, you will generate too many
>>false positive hits when that word appears out of context (eg "Boy did 
>>the Yankees bomb tonight").
>
>
> Topic spotting where the transcription is so bad it introduced
> a 70-80% error rate in the words?  Do tell how........

Er, I didn't say it was possible, I said that I thought it was a more
useful goal to aim for than spotting isolated words.  If transcription 
error rates never get better than the 70-80% you mention[*], then it's
probably an unattainable goal.  You probably need error rates of 25%
or less to stand a hope in hell of topic spotting.

Pete.
[*] Where does that figure come from, anyway?