An online numeric discriminator is disclosed which performs the decision making process between strings of characters coming from a dual output optical character recognition system for use in text processing or mail processing applications. The dual output OCR uses separate recognition processes for alphabetic and numeric characters and attempts to recognize each character independently as both an alphabetic and a numeric character. The alphabetic interpretation of the scanned word is outputted as an alphabetic subfield on a first outline line and the numeric interpretation of the scanned word is outputted as a numeric subfield on a second output line from the OCR. The bayesian online numeric discriminator then analyzes the two character streams by calculating a first conditional probability that the OCR perceived the alphabetic subfield given that a numeric subfield was actually scanned and a second conditional probability that the OCR perceived the numeric subfield given that an alphabetic subfield was actually scanned. These first and second conditional probabilities are then compared. If the conditional probability that the OCR read the alphabetic subfield given that the numeric subfield was actually scanned, is larger than the conditional probability that the OCR read the numeric subfield given that the alphabetic subfield was actually scanned, then the numeric subfield is selected by the discriminator as the most probable interpretation of the word scanned by the OCR.
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