Introduction to Information Retrieval

Introduction to

Information Retrieval

Introduction to Information Retrieval

Information Retrieval
Information Retrieval (IR) is finding material (usually documents) of an unstructured nature (usually text) that satisfies an information need from within large collections (usually stored on computers).

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Boolean Retrieval
Which plays of Shakespeare contain the words Brutus AND Caesar but NOT Calpurnia? One could grep all of Shakespeares plays for Brutus and Caesar, then strip out lines containing Calpurnia? Why is that not the answer?
Slow (for large corpora) Ranked retrieval (best documents to return) Later lectures

The way to avoid linearly scanning the text for each query is to index the document in advance.
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Binary Term-document incidence

Antony and Cleopatra Julius Caesar The Tempest Hamlet Othello Macbeth

Antony Brutus Caesar Calpurnia Cleopatra mercy worser

1 1 1 0 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 1 1

0 1 1 0 0 1 1

0 0 1 0 0 1 1

1 0 1 0 0 1 0

Brutus AND Caesar BUT NOT Calpurnia

1 if play contains word, 0 otherwise

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Incidence vectors
So we have a 0/1 vector for each term. To answer query: take the vectors for Brutus, Caesar and Calpurnia, complement the last, and then do a bitwise AND. 110100 AND 110111 AND 101111 = 100100.

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Answers to query
Antony and Cleopatra, Act III, Scene ii
Agrippa [Aside to DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS]: Why, Enobarbus, When Antony found Julius Caesar dead, He cried almost to roaring; and he wept When at Philippi he found Brutus slain.

Hamlet, Act III, Scene ii

Lord Polonius: I did enact Julius Caesar I was killed i' the Capitol; Brutus killed me.

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Boolean retrieval model

The Boolean retrieval model is a model for information retrieval in which we can pose any query which is in the form of a Boolean expression of terms, that is, in which terms are combined with the operators AND, OR, and NOT. The model views each document as just a set of words.

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Basic assumptions of Information Retrieval

Collection: Fixed set of documents Goal: Retrieve documents with information that is relevant to the users information need and helps the user complete a task

Introduction to Information Retrieval

The classic search model

TASK

Get rid of mice in a politically correct way Info about removing mice without killing them How do I trap mice alive?

Info Need

Verbal form

Query

mouse trap

SEARCH ENGINE

Query Refinement

Results

Corpus

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How good are the retrieved docs?

Precision : Fraction of retrieved docs that are relevant to users information need Precision = relevant documents retrieved/ total documents Recall : Fraction of relevant docs in collection that are retrieved recall = relevant documents retrieved / total relevant documents
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Bigger collections
Consider N = 1 million documents, each with about 1000 words. Avg 6 bytes/word including spaces/punctuation
6GB of data in the documents.

Say there are M = 500K distinct terms among these.

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Introduction to Information Retrieval

Cant build the matrix

500K x 1M matrix has half-a-trillion 0s and 1s. But it has no more than one billion 1s.(1M x 1000) so a minimum of 99.8% of the cells are zero.
matrix is extremely sparse.

Why?

Whats a better representation?

We only record the 1 positions. This idea is central to the first major concept in information retrieval, the inverted index.
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Introduction to Information Retrieval

Inverted index
For each term t, we must store a list of all documents that contain t.
Identify each by a docID, a document serial number

Can we used fixed-size arrays for this?

Brutus Caesar Calpurnia 1 1 2 2 4 4 11 5 31 45 173 174 6 16 57 132

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54 101

What happens if the word Caesar is added to document 14?

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Introduction to Information Retrieval

Inverted index
We need variable-size postings lists
On disk, a continuous run of postings is normal and best In memory, can use linked lists or variable length arrays
Some tradeoffs in size/ease of insertion Posting

Brutus Caesar Calpurnia

1 1

2 2

4 4

11 5

31 45 173 174 6 16 57 132

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Dictionary

Postings

Sorted by docID
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Inverted index construction

Documents to be indexed.

Friends, Romans, countrymen.. Tokenizer

Token stream.

Friends Romans
Linguistic modules

Countrymen

Modified tokens.

friend
Indexer friend

roman

countryman

2
1

4
2 16

Inverted index.

roman countryman

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Indexer steps: Token sequence

Sequence of (Modified token, Document ID) pairs.

Doc 1 I did enact Julius Caesar I was killed i' the Capitol; Brutus killed me.

Doc 2 So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious

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Indexer steps: Sort

Sort by terms
And then docID

Core indexing step

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Indexer steps: Dictionary & Postings

Multiple term entries in a single document are merged. Split into Dictionary and Postings Doc. frequency information is added.

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Where do we pay in storage?

Lists of docIDs Terms and counts

Pointers

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Processing the Boolean Queries

How do we process a query using an inverted index and basic Boolean retrieval model?

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Query processing: AND

Consider processing the query:
Brutus AND Caesar Locate Brutus in the Dictionary;
Retrieve its postings.

Locate Caesar in the Dictionary;

Retrieve its postings.

Merge the two postings: 2 1 4 2 8 3 16 5 32 8 13 64 21 128

Brutus 34 Caesar
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The merge
Walk through the two postings simultaneously, in time linear in the total number of postings entries

2
1

4
2

8
3

16
5

32 8 13

64 21

128

Brutus 34 Caesar

If the list lengths are x and y, the merge takes O(x+y) operations. Crucial: postings sorted by docID.
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Introduction to Information Retrieval

Intersecting two postings lists (a merge algorithm)

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Boolean queries: Exact match

The Boolean retrieval model is being able to ask a query that is a Boolean expression:
Boolean Queries are queries using AND, OR and NOT to join query terms
Views each document as a set of words Is precise: document matches condition or not.

Perhaps the simplest model to build an IR system on

Primary commercial retrieval tool for 3 decades. Many search systems you still use are Boolean:
Email, library catalog, Mac OS X Spotlight
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Example: WestLaw

http://www.westlaw.com/

Largest commercial (paying subscribers) legal search service (started 1975; ranking added 1992) Tens of terabytes of data; 700,000 users Majority of users still use boolean queries Example query:
What is the statute of limitations in cases involving the federal tort claims act? LIMIT! /3 STATUTE ACTION /S FEDERAL /2 TORT /3 CLAIM
/3 = within 3 words, /S = in same sentence
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Example: WestLaw
Another example query:

http://www.westlaw.com/

Requirements for disabled people to be able to access a workplace disabl! /p access! /s work-site work-place (employment /3 place

Note that SPACE is disjunction, not conjunction! Long, precise queries; proximity operators; incrementally developed; not like web search Many professional searchers still like Boolean search
You know exactly what you are getting

But that doesnt mean it actually works better.

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Query optimization
What is the best order for query processing? Consider a query that is an AND of n terms. For each of the n terms, get its postings, then AND them together.
Brutus 2 4 8 16 32 64 128

Caesar
Calpurnia

16

21 34

13 16
27

Query: Brutus AND Calpurnia AND Caesar

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Query optimization example

Process in order of increasing freq:
start with smallest set, then keep cutting further.
This is why we kept document freq. in dictionary

Brutus

16 32 64 128

Caesar
Calpurnia

16

21 34

13 16

Execute the query as (Calpurnia AND Brutus) AND Caesar.

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More general optimization

e.g., (madding OR crowd) AND (ignoble OR strife) Get doc. freq.s for all terms. Estimate the size of each OR by the sum of its doc. freq.s (conservative). Process in increasing order of OR sizes.

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Introduction to Information Retrieval

Exercise
Recommend a query processing order for

Term

Freq
213312 87009 107913 271658 46653 316812

(tangerine OR trees) AND (marmalade OR skies) AND (kaleidoscope OR eyes)

eyes kaleidoscope marmalade skies tangerine trees

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Introduction to Information Retrieval

Query processing exercises

Exercise: If the query is friends AND romans AND (NOT countrymen), how could we use the freq of countrymen? Exercise: Extend the merge to an arbitrary Boolean query. Can we always guarantee execution in time linear in the total postings size? Hint: Begin with the case of a Boolean formula query: in this, each query term appears only once in the query.
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Introduction to Information Retrieval

Ranking search results

Boolean queries give inclusion or exclusion of docs. Often we want to rank/group results
Need to measure proximity from query to each doc. Need to decide whether docs presented to user are singletons, or a group of docs covering various aspects of the query.

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Introduction to Information Retrieval

The web and its challenges

Unusual and diverse documents Unusual and diverse users, queries, information needs Beyond terms, exploit ideas from social networks
link analysis, clickstreams ...

How do search engines work? And how can we make them better?
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Introduction to Information Retrieval

More sophisticated information retrieval

Cross-language information retrieval Question answering Summarization Text mining

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