In modeling various signals such as the speech signal by using the Hidden Markov Model (HMM), it is often required to adapt
not only to the inherent nonstationarity of the signal, but to changes of sources (speakers) who yield the signal. The well
known Baum-Welch algorithm tries to adjust HMM so as to optimize the fit between the model and the signal observed. In this
paper we develop an algorithm, which we call the on-line Baum-Welch algorithm, by incorporating the learning rate into the
off-line Baum-Welch algorithm. The algorithm performs in a series of trials. In each trial the algorithm somehow produces
an HMM Mt, then receives a symbol sequence wt, incurring loss - ln Pr(wt|Mt) which is the negative log-likelihood of the HMM Mt evaluated at wt. The performance of the algorithm is measured by the additional total loss, which is called the regret, of the algorithm
over the total loss of a standard algorithm, where the standard algorithm is taken to be a criterion for measuring the relative
loss. We take the off-line Baum-Welch algorithm as such a standard algorithm. To evaluate the performance of an algorithm,
we take the Gradient Descent algorithm. Our experiments show that the on-line Baum-Welch algorithm performs well as compared
to the Gradient Descent algorithm. We carry out the experiments not only for artificial data, but for some reasonably realistic
data which is made by transforming acoustic waveforms to symbol sequences through the vector quantization method. The results
show that the on-line Baum- Welch algorithm adapts the change of speakers very well.