Word Error Rate

The function calculates WER between word sequences H (hypothesis) and R (reference).

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Word error rate (WER) is a measure (metric) of the performance of an automatic speech recognition, machine translation etc.
The function is intended for calculation of WER between word sequence H (hypothesis) and word sequence R (reference).
For calculation we use Levenshtein distance on word level. Levenshtein distance is a minimal quantity of insertions, deletions and substitutions of words for conversion of a hypothesis to a reference. WER=D(H,R)/N, where D(H,R) is a Levenshtein distance between H and R and N is the number of words in the reference R. H and R are cell arrays of words (for example after using TEXTSCAN) or cells with word sequences or strings. Types H and R may be different.

Cite As

Eduard Polityko (2026). Word Error Rate (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/55825-word-error-rate), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .

General Information

MATLAB Release Compatibility

  • Compatible with any release

Platform Compatibility

  • Windows
  • macOS
  • Linux
Version Published Release Notes Action
1.0.0.0