Experiments in query paraphrasing for information retrieval

Ingrid Zukerman; Bhavani Raskutti; Ying Ying Wen

doi:10.1007/3-540-36187-1_3

Experiments in query paraphrasing for information retrieval

Ingrid Zukerman, Bhavani Raskutti, Ying Ying Wen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference Paper › Research › peer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We investigate the effect of paraphrase generation on document retrieval performance. Specifically, we describe experiments where three information sources are used to generate lexical paraphrases of queries posed to the Internet. These information sources are: WordNet, a Webster-based thesaurus, and a combination of Webster and WordNet. Corpus-based information and wordsimilarity information are then used to rank the paraphrases. We evaluated our mechanism using 404 queries whose answers reside in the LA Times subset of the TREC-9 corpus. Our experiments show that query paraphrasing improves retrieval performance, and that performance is influenced both by the number of paraphrases generated for a query and by their quality. Specifically, the best performance was obtained usingWordNet, which improves document recall by 14% and increases the number of questions that can be answered by 8%.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	AI 2002: Advances in Artificial Intelligence
Subtitle of host publication	15th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Canberra, Australia, December 2-6, 2002 Proceedings
Editors	Bob McKay, John Slaney
Place of Publication	Berlin Germany
Publisher	Springer
Pages	24-35
Number of pages	12
ISBN (Print)	3540001972
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36187-1_3
Publication status	Published - 2002
Event	Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2002 - Canberra, Australia Duration: 2 Dec 2002 → 6 Dec 2002 Conference number: 15th https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/3-540-36187-1 (Proceedings)

Publication series

Name	Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Publisher	Springer
Volume	2557
ISSN (Print)	0302-9743

Conference

Conference	Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2002
Abbreviated title	AI 2002
Country/Territory	Australia
City	Canberra
Period	2/12/02 → 6/12/02
Internet address	https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/3-540-36187-1 (Proceedings)

Access to Document

10.1007/3-540-36187-1_3

Cite this

Zukerman, I., Raskutti, B., & Wen, Y. Y. (2002). Experiments in query paraphrasing for information retrieval. In B. McKay, & J. Slaney (Eds.), AI 2002: Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 15th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Canberra, Australia, December 2-6, 2002 Proceedings (pp. 24-35). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 2557). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36187-1_3

Zukerman, Ingrid ; Raskutti, Bhavani ; Wen, Ying Ying. / Experiments in query paraphrasing for information retrieval. AI 2002: Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 15th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Canberra, Australia, December 2-6, 2002 Proceedings. editor / Bob McKay ; John Slaney. Berlin Germany : Springer, 2002. pp. 24-35 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

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title = "Experiments in query paraphrasing for information retrieval",

abstract = "We investigate the effect of paraphrase generation on document retrieval performance. Specifically, we describe experiments where three information sources are used to generate lexical paraphrases of queries posed to the Internet. These information sources are: WordNet, a Webster-based thesaurus, and a combination of Webster and WordNet. Corpus-based information and wordsimilarity information are then used to rank the paraphrases. We evaluated our mechanism using 404 queries whose answers reside in the LA Times subset of the TREC-9 corpus. Our experiments show that query paraphrasing improves retrieval performance, and that performance is influenced both by the number of paraphrases generated for a query and by their quality. Specifically, the best performance was obtained usingWordNet, which improves document recall by 14% and increases the number of questions that can be answered by 8%.",

author = "Ingrid Zukerman and Bhavani Raskutti and Wen, {Ying Ying}",

year = "2002",

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booktitle = "AI 2002: Advances in Artificial Intelligence",

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Zukerman, I, Raskutti, B & Wen, YY 2002, Experiments in query paraphrasing for information retrieval. in B McKay & J Slaney (eds), AI 2002: Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 15th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Canberra, Australia, December 2-6, 2002 Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2557, Springer, Berlin Germany, pp. 24-35, Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2002, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia, 2/12/02. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36187-1_3

Experiments in query paraphrasing for information retrieval. / Zukerman, Ingrid; Raskutti, Bhavani; Wen, Ying Ying.
AI 2002: Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 15th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Canberra, Australia, December 2-6, 2002 Proceedings. ed. / Bob McKay; John Slaney. Berlin Germany: Springer, 2002. p. 24-35 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 2557).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference Paper › Research › peer-review

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AB - We investigate the effect of paraphrase generation on document retrieval performance. Specifically, we describe experiments where three information sources are used to generate lexical paraphrases of queries posed to the Internet. These information sources are: WordNet, a Webster-based thesaurus, and a combination of Webster and WordNet. Corpus-based information and wordsimilarity information are then used to rank the paraphrases. We evaluated our mechanism using 404 queries whose answers reside in the LA Times subset of the TREC-9 corpus. Our experiments show that query paraphrasing improves retrieval performance, and that performance is influenced both by the number of paraphrases generated for a query and by their quality. Specifically, the best performance was obtained usingWordNet, which improves document recall by 14% and increases the number of questions that can be answered by 8%.

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Zukerman I, Raskutti B, Wen YY. Experiments in query paraphrasing for information retrieval. In McKay B, Slaney J, editors, AI 2002: Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 15th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Canberra, Australia, December 2-6, 2002 Proceedings. Berlin Germany: Springer. 2002. p. 24-35. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). doi: 10.1007/3-540-36187-1_3