A Statistical Model for Relevance Feedback in Information Retrieval

Abstract

A statistical model is presented for the investigation of a practical method used in relevance feedback. A necessary and sufficient condition for the two parameters used in this method to define a better query than the original query is given. A region in the plane of the parameters is shown to satisfy the sufficient condition. While the points for producing optimal queries are not exactly located, they are shown to be lying on a finite portion of a hyperbola. Experimental results support some of the theoretical findings.