Fact · Speech recognition
Morris, Maier and Green propose match error rate (MER), the proportion of input and output word matches that are errors, as an alternative absolute measure.
Checked against its source on October 17, 2026
In the source's own words
“MER is the proportion of I/O word matches which are errors”
From WER and RIL to MER and WIL: Improved Evaluation Measures for Connected Speech Recognition, Andrew Cameron Morris et al., Proceedings of Interspeech 2004, ISCA, 2004, Abstract.
Open the original- What it measures
- MER divides by all alignment decisions (hits, substitutions, deletions and insertions), so it stays between 0 and 1.
- What it does not show
- Most published results report WER, so compare like with like and name the measure you use.