Question about make topology

[forsubhi]

I use maketopology script to generate topology file and the output is

#
# 3-state Bakis topology HMM with non-emitting last state
# These values are normalized so that rows sum to one.
#
# NO COMMENTS BETWEEN # OF STATES AND TRANSITION MATRIX
#
#
#Version number
0.1
# Number of states per model followed by transition matrix
4
3.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 
0.0 3.0 1.0 0.0 
0.0 0.0 3.0 1.0 
# Last state has no outgoing arcs unless
# embedded in a sentence hmm structure

I read in the documentation that topology array contains booleans values to
indicate that states are connected or not , but in this matrix there is
numbers like 3
what is the meaning of that ?

and I have question about skipstate , when do I use it and why ?

[Nickolay V. Shmyrev]

I read in the documentation that topology array contains booleans values to
indicate that states are connected or not , but in this matrix there is
numbers like 3 what is the meaning of that ?

I'm not sure what documentation are you talking about, but it seems wrong

and I have question about skipstate , when do I use it and why ?

Different HMM topologies are more suitable for different types of data. If
your observation sequencies typically contains jumps between non-sequential
states you might want to use skip state. It's rare situation for speech
though.

[forsubhi]

what is the meaning of number 3 here ?

[Nickolay V. Shmyrev]

3.0 is an initial rough approximation for the state transition probability.
The whole idea is that in transition matrix jump to next state probability is
bigger than stay in this state probability.

[forsubhi]

thanks