I am deeply indebted to Dr. Michael Berry, my major advisor, for his kind guidance and support. I also thank Dr. Susan Dumais, director of the Information Sciences Research Group at Bellcore, for her technical advice. In addition, she graciously allowed us
Vector-spacemodelsweredevelopedtoeliminatemanyoftheproblemsassociatedwithexact,lexicalmatchingtechniques.Inparticular,sincewordsoftenhavemultiplemeanings(polysemy),itisdif cultforalexicalmatchingtechniquetodifferentiatebetweentwodocumentsthatshareagivenword,butuseitdifferently,withoutun-derstandingthecontextinwhichthewordwasused.Also,sincetherearemanywaystodescribeagivenconcept(synonomy),relateddocumentsmaynotusethesameterminologytodescribetheirsharedconcepts.Aqueryusingtheterminologyofonedocumentwillnotretrievetheotherrelateddocuments.Intheworstcase,aqueryusingterminologydifferentthanthatusedbyrelateddocumentsinthecollectionmaynotretrieveanydocumentsusinglexicalmatching,eventhoughthecollectioncontainsrelateddocuments[BDO95].
Vector-spacemodels,byplacingterms,documents,andqueriesinaterm-documentspaceandcomputingsimilaritiesbetweenthequeriesandthetermsordocuments,al-lowtheresultsofaquerytoberankedaccordingtothesimilaritymeasureused.Unlikelexicalmatchingtechniquesthatprovidenorankingoraverycruderankingscheme(forexample,rankingonedocumentbeforeanotherdocumentbecauseitcon-tainsmoreoccurrencesofthesearchterms),thevector-spacemodels,bybasingtheirrankingsontheEuclideandistanceortheanglemeasurebetweenthequeryandtermsordocumentsinthespace,areabletoautomaticallyguidetheusertodocumentsthatmightbemoreconceptuallysimilarandofgreaterusethanotherdocuments.Also,byrepresentingtermsanddocumentsinthesamespace,vector-spacemodelsoftenprovideanelegantmethodofimplementingrelevancefeedback[SB90].Relevancefeedback,byallowingdocumentsaswellastermstoformthequery,andusingthetermsinthosedocumentstosupplementthequery,increasesthelengthandprecisionofthequery,helpingtheusertomoreaccuratelyspecifywhatheorshedesiresfromthesearch.
Informationretrievalmodelstypicallyexpresstheretrievalperformanceofthesystemintermsoftwoquantities:precisionandrecall.Precisionistheratioofthenumberofrelevantdocumentsretrievedbythesystemtothetotalnumberof
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