Paul Thomas
ABSTRACT
Algorithms in distributed information retrieval often rely on accurate knowledge of the size of a collection. The "multiple capture-recapture" method of Shokouhi et al. is one of the more reliable algorithms for determining collection size, but it relies on samples with a uniform number of documents. Such uniform samples are often hard to obtain in a working system.
A simple generalisation of multiple capture-recapture does not rely on uniform sample sizes. Simulations show it is as accurate as the original method even when sample sizes vary considerably, making it a useful technique in real tools.
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Digital Library
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- M. Shokouhi, J. Zobel, F. Scholer, and S. M. M. Tahaghoghi. Capturing collection size for distributed non-cooperative retrieval. In Proc. ACM SIGIR, 2006. Google ScholarDigital Library
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Index Terms
- Generalising multiple capture-recapture to non-uniform sample sizes
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