1. A method to be executed at least in part in a computing device for training and evaluating a combiner in a pattern recognition system, the method comprising: randomly partitioning available training data into a first training data set and a tune data set that are distinct from each other; training a first group of base modules associated with the pattern recognition system using the first training data set; training the combiner using the tune data set and the trained first group of base modules; training a second group of base modules using a second training data set; and evaluating the combiner using the second group of base modules and a test data set randomly partitioned from the available training data.