  Finding the best set of gestures to use for a given computer recognition
problem is an essential part of optimizing the recognition performance while
being mindful to those who may articulate the gestures. An objective function,
called the ellipsoidal distance ratio metric (EDRM), for determining the best
gestures from a larger lexicon library is presented, along with a numerical
method for incorporating subjective preferences. In particular, we demonstrate
an efficient algorithm that chooses the best $n$ gestures from a lexicon of $m$
gestures where typically $n \ll m$ using a weighting of both subjective and
objective measures.
