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Information Retrieval: Types, Process, and Techniques

Explore the search process, information retrieval methods, and evaluation techniques for effective retrieval of desired information. Understand search components, query formulation, document representation, and ranking strategies. Learn about different types of retrieval and ways of finding text. Discover how machines and human judgment can be utilized in information retrieval. Gain insights into term weights, index quality, and indexing techniques. Enhance your understanding of user needs and types of queries in the information retrieval process.

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Information Retrieval: Types, Process, and Techniques

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  1. Search Session 10 LBSC 690 Information Technology

  2. Agenda • The search process • Information retrieval • Recommender systems • Evaluation

  3. Information “Retrieval” • Find something that you want • The information need may or may not be explicit • Known item search • Find the class home page • Answer seeking • Is Lexington or Louisville the capital of Kentucky? • Directed exploration • Who makes videoconferencing systems?

  4. Information Retrieval Types Source: Ayse Goker

  5. Information Retrieval Paradigm Search Browse Document Delivery Select Examine Query Document

  6. Predict Nominate IR System Query Formulation Query Search Ranked List Selection Query Reformulation and Relevance Feedback Document Examination Document Source Reselection Delivery Supporting the Search Process Source Selection Choose

  7. IR System Query Formulation Query Search Ranked List Selection Document Indexing Index Examination Document Acquisition Collection Delivery Supporting the Search Process Source Selection

  8. Human-Machine Synergy • Machines are good at: • Doing simple things accurately and quickly • Scaling to larger collections in sublinear time • People are better at: • Accurately recognizing what they are looking for • Evaluating intangibles such as “quality” • Both are pretty bad at: • Mapping consistently between words and concepts

  9. Search Component Model Utility Human Judgment Information Need Document Query Formulation Query Document Processing Query Processing Representation Function Representation Function Query Representation Document Representation Comparison Function Retrieval Status Value

  10. Ways of Finding Text • Searching metadata • Using controlled or uncontrolled vocabularies • Free text • Characterize documents by the words the contain • Social filtering • Exchange and interpret personal ratings

  11. “Exact Match” Retrieval • Find all documents with some characteristic • Indexed as “Presidents -- United States” • Containing the words “Clinton” and “Peso” • Read by my boss • A set of documents is returned • Hopefully, not too many or too few • Usually listed in date or alphabetical order

  12. Ranked Retrieval • Put most useful documents near top of a list • Possibly useful documents go lower in the list • Users can read down as far as they like • Based on what they read, time available, ... • Provides useful results from weak queries • Untrained users find exact match harder to use

  13. Similarity-Based Retrieval • Assume “most useful” = most similar to query • Weight terms based on two criteria: • Repeated words are good cues to meaning • Rarely used words make searches more selective • Compare weights with query • Add up the weights for each query term • Put the documents with the highest total first

  14. Simple Example: Counting Words Query: recall and fallout measures for information retrieval Query 1 2 3 Documents: 1 complicated 1 contaminated 1: Nuclear fallout contaminated Texas. 1 1 fallout 1 1 1 information 2: Information retrieval is interesting. 1 interesting 3: Information retrieval is complicated. 1 nuclear 1 1 1 retrieval 1 Texas

  15. Discussion Point: Which Terms to Emphasize? • Major factors • Uncommon terms are more selective • Repeated terms provide evidence of meaning • Adjustments • Give more weight to terms in certain positions • Title, first paragraph, etc. • Give less weight each term in longer documents • Ignore documents that try to “spam” the index • Invisible text, excessive use of the “meta” field, …

  16. Discussion PointWhich Terms to Emphasize? • Major factors • Uncommon terms are more selective • Repeated terms provide evidence of meaning • Adjustments • Give less weight each term in longer documents • Ignore documents that try to “spam” the index • Invisible text, excessive use of the “meta” field, … • Give more weight to terms in certain positions • Title, first paragraph, etc.

  17. “Okapi” Term Weights TF component IDF component

  18. Index Quality • Crawl quality • Comprehensiveness, dead links, duplicate detection • Document analysis • Frames, metadata, imperfect HTML, … • Document extension • Anchor text, source authority, category, language, … • Document restriction (ephemeral text suppression) • Banner ads, keyword spam, …

  19. Indexing Anchor Text • A type of “document expansion” • Terms near links describe content of the target • Works even when you can’t index content • Image retrieval, uncrawled links, …

  20. Queries on the Web (1999) • Low effort on query construction • 2.35 (often imprecise) terms per query • 20% use operators • 22% are subsequently modified • Low effort on browsing • Only 15% view more than one page • Most look only “above the fold” • One study showed that 10% don’t know how to scroll!

  21. Types of User Needs • Informational (30-40% of AltaVista queries) • What is a quark? • Navigational • Find the home page of United Airlines • Transactional • Data: What is the weather in Paris? • Shopping: Who sells a Viao Z505RX? • Proprietary: Obtain a journal article

  22. Search Engine Query Languages www.searchengineshowdown.com

  23. English Definitions Query Query Translation Translated “Headlines” Translated Query Search Ranked List MT Selection Document Examination Query Reformulation Searching Other Languages Query Formulation Document Use

  24. Speech Retrieval Architecture Query Formulation Speech Recognition Automatic Search Boundary Tagging Content Tagging Interactive Selection

  25. Use ratings as to describe objects Personal recommendations, peer review, … Beyond topicality: Accuracy, coherence, depth, novelty, style, … Has been applied to many modalities Books, Usenet news, movies, music, jokes, beer, … Rating-Based Recommendation

  26. Using Positive Information

  27. Using Negative Information

  28. A Problem with Explicit Ratings • Cognitive load on users -- people don’t like to provide ratings • Rating sparsity -- needs a number of raters to make recommendations • No ways to detect new items that have not rated by any users

  29. Implicit Evidence for Ratings

  30. Click Streams • Browsing histories are easily captured • Send all links to a central site • Record from and to pages and user’s cookie • Redirect the browser to the desired page • Reading time is correlated with interest • Can be used to build individual profiles • Used to target advertising by doubleclick.com

  31. Estimating Authority from Links Hub Authority Authority

  32. Hands On: Try Some Search Engines • Images (based on image similarity) • http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/photos/blobworld/ • Audio (based on speech recognition) • http://speechbot.research.compaq.com • Multimedia (based on metadata) • http://singingfish.com • Movies (based on recommendations) • http://www.movielens.umn.edu • Grey literature (based on citations) • http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs

  33. Evaluation • What can be measured that reflects the searcher’s ability to use a system? (Cleverdon, 1966) • Coverage of Information • Form of Presentation • Effort required/Ease of Use • Time and Space Efficiency • Recall • Precision Effectiveness

  34. Retrieved Relevant Measures of Effectiveness

  35. Precision-Recall Curves Source: Ellen Voorhees, NIST

  36. Affective Evaluation • Measure stickiness through frequency of use • Non-comparative, long-term • Key factors (from cognitive psychology): • Worst experience • Best experience • Most recent experience • Highly variable effectiveness is undesirable • Bad experiences are particularly memorable

  37. Other Web Search Quality Factors • Spam suppression • “Adversarial information retrieval” • Every source of evidence has been spammed • Text, queries, links, access patterns, … • “Family filter” accuracy • Link analysis can be very helpful

  38. Summary • Search is a process engaged in by people • Human-machine synergy is the key • Content and behavior offer useful evidence • Evaluation must consider many factors

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