What are the significant variables in dynamic programming for discrete utterance recognition?

In the recent literature, several papers have presented experimental data dealing with performance differences in discrete utterance recognition (DUR), as a function of dynamic programming variables. The theme of the present paper is that, for the most part, these differences are insignificant when viewed in the context of real-time, full-system performance. This theme is supported by the results of several large-scale experiments in which 22 untrained talkers and 2 trained talkers produced some 2676 utterances from two different vocabularies. Results show that the significant variables are the talkers and the vocabulary items themselves; other variables demonstrate strong talker and vocabulary dependencies. As independent variables, their effects are unpredictable.