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Pankaj
2011-07-15
2012-09-22
  • Pankaj

    Pankaj - 2011-07-15

    Hi,
    I am using pocketsphinx 0.7 and trying to get nbest list using language model
    search
    I had a clip which had the words "GO FORWARD"
    It was decoded as
    OPEN FORWARD (n00000000 -12100)
    In the nbestdir a file got created as n00000000.hyp
    This file had the following results

    OPEN FORWARD -4886
    LAST FORWARD -5057
    NEW FORWARD -5116
    NEXT FORWARD -5155

    How do I interpret the nbest results. Are the scores given in the nbest list
    the acoustic scores or the posterior probabilities. Can these scores be
    treated as approximate confidence scores.

    Regards
    Pankaj

     
  • Nickolay V. Shmyrev

    Hello

    The score returned is an typical path score used in ps_get_hyp. It is a sum of
    acoustic score and language score.

    It has little use as is I think, you need to do additional calculations to
    work with it.

     
  • Pankaj

    Pankaj - 2011-07-17

    Hi,

    Does the hyp result given by the ps_get_hyp corresponds to the result with the
    best score given in the nbest list.

    If yes, then why in the above example the score of ps_get_hyp result OPEN
    FORWARD (n00000000 -12100) doesn't matches with any of the results given in
    the nbest list.

    Regards
    Pankaj

     
  • Nickolay V. Shmyrev

    This issue requires investigation. One need to dump the lattice first for a
    small grammar and check if bestpath in a lattice is indeed the one returned by
    n-best. Then we need to compare lattice bestpath with the results of the
    ps_get_hyp. It might be a bug.

     
  • Pankaj

    Pankaj - 2011-07-19

    Hi Nicole

    Could you suggest what minimal additional calculations will be required for
    measuring confidence scores (FSG search). Is it possible to measure confidence
    scores by performing calculations on the word lattice at the application level
    only without touching the code related to the history entry generation.

    Regards
    Pankaj

     
  • Nickolay V. Shmyrev

    Hello

    Unfortunatly a good confidence score for FSG search is a subject of extensive
    research. One can implement several methods which aren't based on posteriour
    for example acoustic-score-based confidence or background garbage model
    confidence. There was a good confidence estimation implemented in sphinx2, see
    the function search_hyp_conf in sphinx2 sources. It's not yet implemented in
    pocketsphinx.

    Most methods will require modification of the search algorithm.

     
  • Pankaj

    Pankaj - 2011-07-20

    Hi Nicole,

    1. With my limited test data I have observed that most of the times when recognition is correct posterior probability is zero, which is very logical. But sometimes even though recognition is correct and all nbest results are also identical but the posterior probability is non zero and there are a few instances when posterior probability is zero but the recognition is not correct. So what do posterior probabilities indicate at? I was thinking of usually the posterior probabilities as a crude confidence score.

    2. I am thinking of trying to port search_hyp_conf from sphinx2 to pocketsphinx. What complexities might be there? Will it require any change in the way the history entries are created, i.e will it to require a modification of code inside fsg_search_step function.

    Regards
    Pankaj

     
  • Nickolay V. Shmyrev

    So what do posterior probabilities indicate at?

    For small grammar posterior probability reported has little meaning unless you
    include pronunciation variants and confusable words in grammar.

    What complexities might be there? Will it require any change in the way the
    history entries are created, i.e will it to require a modification of code
    inside fsg_search_step function.

    It has separate phone loop search which has to be implemented.

     
  • Pankaj

    Pankaj - 2011-07-22

    Hi Nicole,

    There is an auxiliary phone loop search in pocketsphinx which gets enabled
    when -pl_window is specified. Is this the same phone_loop_search which you are
    referring to.

    Regards
    Pankaj

     
  • Nickolay V. Shmyrev

    Is this the same phone_loop_search which you are referring to.

    It's similar phone loop search but s2 version accumulates more statistics
    about active phones and uses this statistics to derive per-phone confidence
    and per-word confidence in the result.

     
  • Pankaj

    Pankaj - 2011-07-22

    Hi,

    Sphinx2 gives the confidence scores for an individual word. What would be the
    confidence score for an utterance consisting of multiple words. Will it be the
    sum or product of the confidence scores of the individual words.

    Pankaj

     
  • Nickolay V. Shmyrev

    Geometrical mean of probs or average of logprobs.

     

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