Comments on: Multiple-Query Sessions

By: FXPAL Blog » Blog Archive » Recall-oriented search on the web

FXPAL Blog » Blog Archive » Recall-oriented search on the web — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:49:07 +0000

[...] am sure that much of this work has already been done (as Daniel Tunkelang points out), but it would be useful, I think, to bring it together in a coherent way to inform [...]

By: fd

fd — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:17:00 +0000

I’ll have to admit basing my opinion only on Xuehua’s published/presented results. But if you didn’t see any perceivable effect on your experience, I’d give it a few months over a large user base.

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:47:00 +0000

Fernando, that's an interesting study, but I can see why you found it painful. Personally, I'm most interested in the process of query reformulation. It seems that an effective system should support this process, at least in the fulfillment of a single information need across multiple queries. I'm a fan of guided reformulation (I do work for Endeca after all!), but even a purely ranked retrieval approach would support reformulation if it was predictable.

As for the UCAIR work at UIUC, I tried playing with it last year, but didn't see a perceptible change in experience. Have you tried it out yourself?

By: fd

fd — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:11:00 +0000

A few years ago, James Allan and I somehow convinced a good-sized group of students to browse through a proxy, mark search session boundaries, and annotate relevant documents. We ran a bunch of session-based experiments to test user modeling and personalization with mixed results. We submitted a write-up to a couple of conferences but turned up goose eggs. Paging through the document with a tad more experienced eyes, I can see why. The somewhat painful write-up can be found here.

For a more developed approach to this problem (with better results), I suggest Xuehua Shen's work on adaptive IR.