A mathematical model of a weighted boolean retrieval system

摘要

The use of weights to denote a query representation and/or the indexing of a document is analysed as a generalization of a Boolean retrieval system. Criteria are given for the functions used to evaluate the relevance of the records to a specific query, including self-consistency. Various mechanisms suggested in the literature for evaluating the relevance of records with regard to a given query are tested and found to be less than satisfactory. A new approach is suggested to avoid some of the perils of a weighted Boolean retrieval system.