Retrieval Models

Synonyms

Document models; Document representations; Relevance functions

Glossary

Feature:

A characteristic property of a document. Usually, a document’s terms are used as features, but virtually every measurable document property can be chosen, such as word classes, average sentence lengths, principal components of term-document-occurrence matrices, or term synonyms

Information need:

Specifically here: A lack of information or knowledge that can be satisfied by a set of text documents

Query:

Specifically here: A small set of terms that expresses a user’s information need

Relevance:

The extent to which a document is capable to satisfy an information need. Within probabilistic retrieval models, relevance is modeled as a binary random variable

Definition

A retrieval model provides a formal means to address (information) retrieval tasks with the aid of a computer.

Introduction

A retrieval task is given if an information need is to be satisfied by exploiting an information resource. More...