WEIRD: an approach to concept-based information retrieval

ABSTRACT

WEIRD is an automatic document retrieval system designed and implemented at Syracuse University, which attempts to advance the art of computerized retrieval from word-matching to judging conceptual similarity. WEIRD uses a vector space model to represent the relations among terms and documents. Items in the space are located according to their "meaning", which is their proximity to all other items in the data base as measured by co-occurrence frequencies. This is done without manipulating large matrices. The dimensions of the space are not used to define relations; items are defined solely by their position relative to the other items. Retrieval is determined by Euclidean distance from the plotted query. In the first section of the paper the basic characteristics of WEIRD are described. Second, the results of a preliminary evaluation are reported. Alternatives for further development of WEIRD are then considered.

REFERENCES

• 1: Abraham Bookstein , Don Kraft, Operations Research Applied to Document Indexing and Retrieval Decisions, Journal of the ACM (JACM), v.24 n.3, p.418-427, July 1977 [doi>10.1145/322017.322022]
• 2: Cagan, C. "A Highly Associative Document Retrieval System." <u>Journal of the American Society for Information Science</u>, 21(5): 330--337 (1970).
• 3: Cleveland, D. B. "An n-Dimensional Retrieval Model." <u>Journal of the American Society for Information Science</u>, 27(5/6): 342--347 (1976).
• 4: Cooper, W. S. "Expected Search Length: A Single Measure of Retrieval Effectiveness Based on the Weak Ordering Action of Retrieval Systems." <u>American Documentation</u>, 19(1): 30--41 (1968).
• 5: Lauren B. Doyle, Semantic Road Maps for Literature Searchers, Journal of the ACM (JACM), v.8 n.4, p.553-578, Oct. 1961 [doi>10.1145/321088.321095]
• 6: Giuliano, V. E. "Analog Networks for Word Associations." <u>IEEE Transactions on Military Electronics</u>, 1963: 221--225.
• 7: Harter, S. P. "A Probabilistic Model for Automatic Keyword Indexing, Part 1." <u>Journal of the American Society for Information Science</u>, 26(4): 197--206 (1975).
• 8: Iker, H. P. "An Historical Note on the Use of Word Frequency Contiguities in Content Analysis." <u>Computers and the Humanitites</u>, 8: 93--98 (1974).
• 9: Katter, R. V. A Study of Document Representations: Multidimensional Scaling of Index Terms. SDC - Final Report, 1967.
• 10: Kim, C. "Theoretical Foundation of Thesaurus-Construction and Some Methodological Considerations for Thesaurus Updating." <u>Journal of the American Society for Information Science</u>, 24(2): 148--156 (1973).
• 11: M. E. Maron , J. L. Kuhns, On Relevance, Probabilistic Indexing and Information Retrieval, Journal of the ACM (JACM), v.7 n.3, p.216-244, July 1960 [doi>10.1145/321033.321035]
• 12: Noreault, T.; Koll, M. B.; McGill, M. J. "Automatic Ranked Output from Boolean Searches in SIRE." (Accepted for publication in <u>Journal of the American Society for Information Science</u>, 1977).
• 13: Osgood, C.; Suci, G.; Tannenbaum, P. <u>The Measurement of Meaning.</u> Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1957.
• 14: Smith, L. C. "Artificial Intelligence in Information Retrieval Systems." <u>Information Processing and Management</u>, 12(3): 189--222 (1976).
• 15: Sparck Jones, K. "Index Term Weighting." <u>Information Storage and Retrieval</u>, 9(11): 619--633 (1973).
• 16: Switzer, P. "Vector Images in Information Retrieval." In: <u>Statistical Association Methods for Mechanical Documentation</u>, Symposium Proceedings, Wash., D.C., 1964. (NBS Misc. Publ. 269, 1965) Stevens, M. E.; Heilprin, L.; Giuliano, V. E. (eds.). 163--171.
• 17: Arvo Tars, Stemming as a system design consideration, ACM SIGIR Forum, v.11 n.1, p.9-16, Summer 1976 [doi>10.1145/1095302.1095303]
• 18: Woelfel, J. Sociology and Science. Unpublished manuscript, Michigan State University, Department of Communication, 1971.
• 19: C. T. Yu , G. Salton, Effective information retrieval using term accuracy, Communications of the ACM, v.20 n.3, p.135-142, March 1977 [doi>10.1145/359436.359441]