US Patent 8396715 Confidence threshold tuning

An expected dialog-turn (ED) value is estimated for evaluating a speech application. Parameters such as a confidence threshold setting can be adjusted based on the expected dialog-turn value. In a particular example, recognition results and corresponding confidence scores are used to estimate the expected dialog-turn value. The recognition results can be associated with a possible outcome for the speech application and a cost for the possible outcome can be used to estimate the expected dialog-turn value.