In this work, the novel fingerprinting evaluation parameter, which is called the punishment cost, is proposed. This parameter can be calculated from the designed matrix, the punishment matrix, and the confusion matrix. The punishment cost can describe how well the result of positioning is in the designated grid or not, by which the conventional parameter, the accuracy, cannot describe. The experiment is done with real measured data on weekdays and weekends. The results are considered in terms of accuracy and the punishment cost. Three well-known machine learning algorithms, i.e. Decision Tree, k-Nearest Neighbors, and Artificial Neural Network, are verified in fingerprinting positioning. In experimental environment, Decision Tree can perform well on the data from weekends whereas the performance is underrated on the data from weekdays. The k-Nearest Neighbors has proper punishment costs, even though it has lower accuracy than that of Artificial Neural Network, which has moderate accuracies but lower punishment costs. Therefore, other criteria should be considered in order to select the algorithm for indoor positioning. In addition, punishment cost can facilitate the conversion spot positioning to floor positioning without data modification.