Abstract
While the Probability Ranking Principle for Information Retrieval provides the basis for formal models, it makes a very strong assumption regarding the dependence between documents. However, it has been observed that in real situations this assumption does not always hold. In this paper we propose a reformulation of the Probability Ranking Principle based on quantum theory. Quantum probability theory naturally includes interference effects between events. We posit that this interference captures the dependency between the judgement of document relevance. The outcome is a more sophisticated principle, the Quantum Probability Ranking Principle, that provides a more sensitive ranking which caters for interference/dependence between documents’ relevance.
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Zuccon, G., Azzopardi, L.A., van Rijsbergen, K. (2009). The Quantum Probability Ranking Principle for Information Retrieval. In: Azzopardi, L., et al. Advances in Information Retrieval Theory. ICTIR 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5766. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04417-5_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04417-5_21
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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