IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamest/v41y1990i5p348-358.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A sensitivity analysis of a probabilistic information retrieval system

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Thompson

Abstract

Results of a set of exploratory simulations to test the effects of errors in estimation of individual term probabilities on the performance of a probabilistic information retrieval system are presented. Searches were executed with various levels of term error on a test collection of probabilistically indexed information sources. The amount of error in the final probability of relevance used to rank sources introduced by these errors was analytically determined. The first simulation analyzed simulated rankings obtained by simulating probabilities of relevance according to the error distribution; in the second simulation measures of rank correlation between simulated rankings and the system's ranking were calculated; in the third, the effect of the error on retrieval performance using the measure expected search length was determined. It was found that substantial error was introduced into final probabilities of relevance, but that for low levels of term error the impact on ranking and retrieval performance was moderate, while even with high levels the actual ranking performed significantly better than a random ranking of retrieved sources. © 1990 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Thompson, 1990. "A sensitivity analysis of a probabilistic information retrieval system," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 41(5), pages 348-358, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:41:y:1990:i:5:p:348-358
    DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199007)41:53.0.CO;2-K
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199007)41:53.0.CO;2-K
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199007)41:53.0.CO;2-K?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:41:y:1990:i:5:p:348-358. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.