Sanderson, M. (2008) Ambiguous queries: test collections need more sense. In: Proceedings of the 31st annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval. Annual ACM Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, July 20 - 24, 2008, Singapore, Singapore. ACM , New York , pp. 499-506. ISBN 978-1-60558-164-4
Abstract
Although there are many papers examining ambiguity in Information Retrieval, this paper shows that there is a whole class of ambiguous word that past research has barely explored. It is shown that the class is more ambiguous than other word types and is commonly used in queries. The lack of test collections containing ambiguous queries is highlighted and a method for creating collections from existing resources is described. Tests using the new collection show the impact of query ambiguity on an IR system: it is shown that conventional systems are incapable of dealing effectively with such queries and that current assumptions about how to improve search effectiveness do not hold when searching on this common query type.
Metadata
Item Type: | Proceedings Paper |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | Copyright 2008 ACM. This is an author produced version of a paper published in "Proceedings of the 31st annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval". Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Ambiguous queries, test collections, diversity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Information School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Repository Officer |
Date Deposited: | 15 Sep 2008 17:39 |
Last Modified: | 15 Sep 2014 03:39 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1390334.1390420 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | ACM |
Identification Number: | 10.1145/1390334.1390420 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:4578 |