Term-Specific Smoothing for the Language Modeling Approach to Information Retrieval: The Importance of a Query Term

Djoerd Hiemstra

doi:10.1145/564376.564385

Term-Specific Smoothing for the Language Modeling Approach to Information Retrieval: The Importance of a Query Term

Djoerd Hiemstra

Databases (Former)

Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

299 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper follows a formal approach to information retrieval based on statistical language models. By introducing some simple reformulations of the basic language modeling approach we introduce the notion of importance of a query term. The importance of a query term is an unknown parameter that explicitly models which of the query terms are generated from the relevant documents (the important terms), and which are not (the unimportant terms). The new language modeling approach is shown to explain a number of practical facts of today's information retrieval systems that are not very well explained by the current state of information retrieval theory, including stop words, mandatory terms, coordination level ranking and retrieval using phrases.

Original language	Undefined
Pages	35-41
Number of pages	7
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/564376.564385
Publication status	Published - Aug 2002
Event	25th Annual International ACM/SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, SIGIR 2002 - Tampere, Finland Duration: 11 Aug 2002 → 15 Aug 2002 Conference number: 25 http://sigir.org/sigir2002/

Conference

Conference	25th Annual International ACM/SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, SIGIR 2002
Abbreviated title	SIGIR
Country/Territory	Finland
City	Tampere
Period	11/08/02 → 15/08/02
Internet address	http://sigir.org/sigir2002/

Keywords

DB-IR: INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
EWI-7255
IR-66443

Access to Document

10.1145/564376.564385

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/564376.564385

Cite this

@conference{1f069afb0f95436892b8761e55ff9c7b,

title = "Term-Specific Smoothing for the Language Modeling Approach to Information Retrieval: The Importance of a Query Term",

abstract = "This paper follows a formal approach to information retrieval based on statistical language models. By introducing some simple reformulations of the basic language modeling approach we introduce the notion of importance of a query term. The importance of a query term is an unknown parameter that explicitly models which of the query terms are generated from the relevant documents (the important terms), and which are not (the unimportant terms). The new language modeling approach is shown to explain a number of practical facts of today's information retrieval systems that are not very well explained by the current state of information retrieval theory, including stop words, mandatory terms, coordination level ranking and retrieval using phrases.",

keywords = "DB-IR: INFORMATION RETRIEVAL, EWI-7255, IR-66443",

author = "Djoerd Hiemstra",

note = "Imported from EWI/DB PMS [db-utwente:inpr:0000003213]; 25th Annual International ACM/SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, SIGIR 2002 ; Conference date: 11-08-2002 Through 15-08-2002",

year = "2002",

month = aug,

doi = "10.1145/564376.564385",

language = "Undefined",

pages = "35--41",

url = "http://sigir.org/sigir2002/",

}

TY - CONF

T1 - Term-Specific Smoothing for the Language Modeling Approach to Information Retrieval: The Importance of a Query Term

AU - Hiemstra, Djoerd

N1 - Conference code: 25

PY - 2002/8

Y1 - 2002/8

N2 - This paper follows a formal approach to information retrieval based on statistical language models. By introducing some simple reformulations of the basic language modeling approach we introduce the notion of importance of a query term. The importance of a query term is an unknown parameter that explicitly models which of the query terms are generated from the relevant documents (the important terms), and which are not (the unimportant terms). The new language modeling approach is shown to explain a number of practical facts of today's information retrieval systems that are not very well explained by the current state of information retrieval theory, including stop words, mandatory terms, coordination level ranking and retrieval using phrases.

AB - This paper follows a formal approach to information retrieval based on statistical language models. By introducing some simple reformulations of the basic language modeling approach we introduce the notion of importance of a query term. The importance of a query term is an unknown parameter that explicitly models which of the query terms are generated from the relevant documents (the important terms), and which are not (the unimportant terms). The new language modeling approach is shown to explain a number of practical facts of today's information retrieval systems that are not very well explained by the current state of information retrieval theory, including stop words, mandatory terms, coordination level ranking and retrieval using phrases.

KW - DB-IR: INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

KW - EWI-7255

KW - IR-66443

U2 - 10.1145/564376.564385

DO - 10.1145/564376.564385

M3 - Paper

SP - 35

EP - 41

T2 - 25th Annual International ACM/SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, SIGIR 2002

Y2 - 11 August 2002 through 15 August 2002

ER -