Tuning the matching function for a threshold weighting semantics in a linguistic information retrieval system

Information retrieval is an activity that attempts to produce documents that better fulfill user information needs. To achieve this activity an information retrieval system uses matching functions that specify the degree of relevance of a document with respect to a user query. Assuming linguistic‐weighted queries we present a new linguistic matching function for a threshold weighting semantics that is defined using a 2‐tuple fuzzy linguistic approach (Herrera F, Martínez L. IEEE Trans Fuzzy Syst 2000;8:746–752). This new 2‐tuple linguistic matching function can be interpreted as a tuning of that defined in “Modelling the Retrieval Process for an Information Retrieval System Using an Ordinal Fuzzy Linguistic Approach” (Herrera‐Viedma E. J Am Soc Inform Sci Technol 2001;52:460–475). We show that it simplifies the processes of computing in the retrieval activity, avoids the loss of precision in final results, and, consequently, can help to improve the users' satisfaction. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 20: 921–937, 2005.     

Investigating the potential of art neural network models for indexing and information retrieval

Database management systems are very sophisticated, efficient, and fast in information retrieval tasks involving traditional data sets such as numbers, strings, and so on, but many limitations become evident when the data are more complex, that is, high or nondimensional data. Considering some existing problems in information retrieval processes, this work proposes a hybrid system that combines a model of the ART family neural network, ART2‐A, with the Slim‐Tree data structure, which is a metric access method. This approach is an alternative to perform clustering on data in an intelligent way so that the data can be recovered from the corresponding Slim‐Tree. The proposed hybrid system is able to perform range and k‐nearest neighbor queries, which is not an inherent characteristic in implementations involving artificial neural networks. Furthermore, experimental results showed that the performance of the hybrid system was better than the performance of Slim‐Tree. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 319–336, 2007.     

A Multigranularity Linguistic Group Decision‐Making Method Based on Hesitant 2‐Tuple Sets

Hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (HFLTS) is a very useful technology in dealing with decision‐making problems where people have hesitancy in providing their linguistic assessments. Distinct methods have been developed to aid decision making with HFLTSs, yet there is little research involving the issue that how to deal with the multigranularity hesitant fuzzy linguistic information. The aim of this paper is to develop the aggregation method for multigranularity hesitant fuzzy linguistic information and solve the linguistic group decision problem with different linguistic term sets. To do so, we first modify the translation functions and aggregation operators in the existing 2‐tuple linguistic representation models so as to aggregate linguistic terms from different linguistic term sets. Then, we introduce the notion of hesitant 2‐tuple sets to make computation of HFLTSs without loss of information, and develop some new operators to aggregate HFLTSs from different linguistic term sets. Using these operators, we propose a method to deal with multigranularity linguistic group decision‐making problems with different situations where importance weights of either criteria or experts are known or unknown. Finally, the multigranularity linguistic group decision‐making model is implemented to the healthcare waste treatment in West China Hospital to validate its effectiveness and efficiency in aiding decision‐making process.     

A multigranular linguistic content‐based recommendation model

Recommendation systems are a clear example of an e‐service that helps the users to find the most suitable products they are looking for, according to their preferences, among a vast quantity of information. These preferences are usually related to human perceptions because the customers express their needs, taste, and so forth to find a suitable product. The perceptions are better modeled by means of linguistic information due to the uncertainty involved in this type of information. In this article, we propose a content‐based recommendation model that will offer a more flexible context to improve the final recommendations where the preferences provided by the sources will be modeled by means of linguistic variables assessed in different linguistic term sets. The proposal consists of offering a multigranular linguistic context for expressing the preferences instead of forcing users to use a unique scale. Then the content‐based recommendation model will look for the most suitable product(s), comparing them with the customer(s) information according to its resemblance. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 419–434, 2007.     

基于模糊语言方法的信息检索系统的研究

该文提出了一个基于模糊语言方法的信息检索系统模型。该系统分为查询界面子系统、数据库子系统和检索子系统三大部分。在查询界面子系统,用布尔表达式表示用户的查询请求,并对每个查询关键词赋予了两种不同语义的语言值权重,该权重表达了用户的模糊检索要求;在数据库子系统,用索引词一文档模糊矩阵表示待检索的文档,对每个索引词。根据其在文档中的出现频率大小。引入了数值权重;在检索子系统,运用模糊语言方法,对用户输入的布尔查询表达式与索引词一文档模糊矩阵进行自底向上的模糊匹配,最后返回满足用户要求的检索结果。相对于传统的基于查询关键词精确匹配的检索系统而言,该系统能较好地满足用户查询要求中的灵活性。     

Handling linguistic web information based on a multi‐agent system

Much information over the Internet is expressed by natural languages. The management of linguistic information involves an operation of comparison and aggregation. Based on the Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) operator and modifying indexes of linguistic terms (their indexes are fuzzy numbers on [0,T] ? R⁺), new linguistic aggregating methods are presented and their properties are discussed. Also, based on a multi‐agent system and new linguistic aggregating methods, gathering linguistic information over the Internet is discussed. Moreover, by fixing the threshold α, “soft filtering information” is proposed and better Web pages (or documents) that the user needs are obtained. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 435–453, 2007.     

Personnel Selection Using Interval 2‐Tuple Linguistic VIKOR Method

Personnel selection is a very important activity in the human resource management of an organization. However, in many practical circumstances, due to time pressure and lack of information about candidates, decision makers generally tend to provide linguistic assessments and use different linguistic term sets to express their opinions during the personnel selection process. In this article, the VIKOR method combined with interval 2‐tuple linguistic variables is proposed to choose appropriate individuals among candidates in a group decision‐making environment. The interval 2‐tuple linguistic variable, which comprises two linguistic terms and two real numbers, is more flexible and precise to deal with linguistic information in solving personnel selection problems. To demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed interval 2‐tuple linguistic VIKOR method, a numerical example of personnel selection in a tertiary care hospital is provided.     

Conceptual clustering in information retrieval

Clustering is used in information retrieval systems to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the retrieval process. Clustering is achieved by partitioning the documents in a collection into classes such that documents that are associated with each other are assigned to the same cluster. This association is generally determined by examining the index term representation of documents or by capturing user feedback on queries on the system. In cluster-oriented systems, the retrieval process can be enhanced by employing characterization of clusters. In this paper, we present the techniques to develop clusters and cluster characterizations by employing user viewpoint. The user viewpoint is elicited through a structured interview based on a knowledge acquisition technique, namely personal construct theory. It is demonstrated that the application of personal construct theory results in a cluster representation that can be used during query as well as to assign new documents to the appropriate clusters.     

Managing the consensus in group decision making in an unbalanced fuzzy linguistic context with incomplete information

To solve group decision-making problems we have to take in account different aspects. On the one hand, depending on the problem, we can deal with different types of information. In this way, most group decision-making problems based on linguistic approaches use symmetrically and uniformly distributed linguistic term sets to express experts’ opinions. However, there exist problems whose assessments need to be represented by means of unbalanced linguistic term sets, i.e., using term sets which are not uniformly and symmetrically distributed. On the other hand, there may be cases in which experts do not have an in-depth knowledge of the problem to be solved. In such cases, experts may not put their opinion forward about certain aspects of the problem and, as a result, they may present incomplete information. The aim of this paper is to present a consensus model to help experts in all phases of the consensus reaching process in group decision-making problems in an unbalanced fuzzy linguistic context with incomplete information. As part of this consensus model, we propose an iterative procedure using consistency measures to estimate the incomplete information. In addition, the consistency measures are used together with consensus measures to guided the consensus model. The main novelty of this consensus model is that it supports the management of incomplete unbalanced fuzzy linguistic information and it allows to achieve consistent solutions with a great level of agreement.     

Consensus reaching for group decision making with multi-granular unbalanced linguistic information: A bounded confidence and minimum adjustment-based approach

In group decision making problems, there exist the situations that decision makers may use unbalanced linguistic term sets that are not uniformly and symmetrically distributed to provide their linguistic assessments over alternatives. Moreover, due to the difference in knowledge and culture backgrounds, it is also possible that multi-granular linguistic term sets may also be used by decision makers. How to manage multi-granular unbalanced linguistic information in consensus-based group decision making has becoming an important topic in linguistic decision making. In this paper, we first revise Herrera’s unbalanced linguistic term sets and propose a simplified linguistic computational model to fuse multi-granular unbalanced linguistic terms. Afterwards, for multi-criteria group decision making problems with multi-granular unbalanced linguistic information, we develop two optimization models to generate adjustment advice for decision makers who have to change his/her opinions in consensus reaching process, which consider both the bounded confidence levels and minimum adjustment of decision makers’ linguistic assessments. Moreover, an algorithm is further proposed to help decision makers reach consensus in group decision making. Eventually, an application example for ERP system supplier selection and some simulation results are presented to illustrate and justify the consensus reaching algorithm.     

Term weighting for information retrieval based on term’s discrimination power

One of the most important research topics in Information Retrieval is term weighting for document ranking and retrieval, such as TFIDF, BM25, etc. We propose a term weighting method that utilizes past retrieval results consisting of the queries that contain a particular term, retrieval documents, and their relevance judgments. A term’s Discrimination Power(DP) is based on the difference degree of the term’s average weights obtained from between relevant and non-relevant retrieved document sets. The difference based DP performs better compared to ratio based DP introduced in the previous research. Our experimental result shows that a term weighting scheme based on the discrimination power method outperforms a TF*IDF based scheme.     

A new probabilistic scheme for information retrieval in hypertext

Abstract

The aim of probabilistic models is to define a retrieval strategy within which documents can be optimally ranked according to their relevance probability, with respect to a given request. In this scheme, the underlying probabilities are estimated according to a history of past queries along with their relevance judgments. Having evolved over the last twenty years, these estimations allow us to take both document frequency and within-document frequency into account.

In the current study, we suggest representing documents not only by index term vectors as proposed by previous probabilistic models but also by considering relevance hypertext links. These relationships, which provide additional evidence on document content, are established according to requests and relevance judgments, and may improve the ranking of the retrieved records, in a sequence most likely to fulfill user intent. Thus, to enhance retrieval effectiveness, our learning retrieval scheme should modify: (1) the weight assigned to each indexing term, (2) the importance attached of each search term, and (3) the relationships between documents. Using a simple additive scheme applied after a ranked list of documents has been determined, with the aid of a probabilistic retrieval strategy, our proposed solution is well suited to a hypertext system. Based on the CACM test collection which includes 3,204 documents and the CISI corpus (1,460 documents), we have built a hypertext and evaluated our proposed retrieval scheme. The retrieval effectiveness of this approach presents interesting results.     

信息检索中的相关反馈技术综述*

论述了信息检索中的向量空间模型、概率模型以及语言模型中所采用的相关反馈技术。其中主要介绍检索词的权重调整、查询扩展、文档相关反馈,以及语言模型中的查询语言模型和文档语言模型的调整。针对最近反馈方面的最新成果——基于term的反馈技术进行了探讨,指出了相关反馈在今后研究的方向,即提供个性化的如分层反馈和利用日志进行反馈,并讨论了相关反馈技术对检索性能的影响。     

基于迭代方法的多层Markov网络信息检索模型

查询扩展是提高检索效果的有效方法,传统的查询扩展方法大都以单个查询词的相关性来扩展查询词,没有充分考虑词项之间、文档之间以及查询之间的相关性,使得扩展效果不佳。针对此问题,该文首先通过分别构造词项子空间和文档子空间的Markov网络,用于提取出最大词团和最大文档团,然后根据词团与文档团的映射关系将词团分为文档依赖和非文档依赖词团,并构建基于文档团依赖的Markov网络检索模型做初次检索,从返回的检索结果集合中构造出查询子空间的Markov网络,用于提取出最大查询团,最后,采用迭代的方法计算文档与查询的相关概率,并构建出最终的基于迭代方法的多层Markov网络信息检索模型。实验结果表明 该文的模型能较好地提高检索效果。     

Flexible querying via if-sets

The traditional query languages used in database management systems require precise and unambiguous queries only. Fuzzy querying was introduced to relax this rigidity and allow the user more natural information retrieval. In this article we suggest how to enrich fuzzy querying by the use of IF-sets. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 587–597, 2007.     

Linguistic aggregation operators of selection criteria in fuzzy information retrieval

A “softening” of the hard Boolean scheme for information retrieval is presented. In this approach, information retrieval is seen as a multicriteria decision-making activity in which the criteria to be satisfied by the potential solutions, i.e., the archived documents, are the requirements expressed in the query. the retrieval function is then an overall decision function evaluating the degree to which each potential solution satisfies a query consisting of information requirements aggregated by operators. Linguistic quantifiers and a connector dealing with primary and optional criteria are defined and introduced in the query language in order to specify the aggregation criteria of the single query requirements. These criteria make it possible for users to express queries in a simple and self-explanatory manner. In particular, linguistic quantifiers are defined which capture the intrinsic vagueness of information needs. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

基于语义的信息检索模型

由于查询与文档中词语的不匹配现象导致一些相关的文档不能被成功地检索出来,在信息检索的研究与实现中,这是影响检索效果的一个很关键的问题。把概念图和知网结合起来,提出对应的相关反馈算法,重新计算词项权重,利用向量空间模型和语义相似度进行语义检索,并给出了语义检索模型。实验结果显示该方法取得了良好的效果。     

Chinese document re-ranking based on automatically acquired term resource

In this paper, we address the problem of document re-ranking in information retrieval, which is usually conducted after initial retrieval to improve rankings of relevant documents. To deal with this problem, we propose a method which automatically constructs a term resource specific to the document collection and then applies the resource to document re-ranking. The term resource includes a list of terms extracted from the documents as well as their weighting and correlations computed after initial retrieval. The term weighting based on local and global distribution ensures the re-ranking not sensitive to different choices of pseudo relevance, while the term correlation helps avoid any bias to certain specific concept embedded in queries. Experiments with NTCIR3 data show that the approach can not only improve performance of initial retrieval, but also make significant contribution to standard query expansion.