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IRList Digest Volume 4 Number 53
IRList Digest Tuesday, 15 November 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 53
Today's Topics:
Query - Public domain / low cost hypermedia software
- Books on information science
- IR courses in Boston area / medical informatics
- CDROMs and comparisons of IR systems
Email - Any problems with format code in dissertation file
Abstracts - Comparing extended Boolean approaches
- Perfect Hashing Functions
Announcement - Reminder about ACM Doc. Proc. Systems Conf.
News addresses are
Internet: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu
BITNET: foxea@vtcc1.bitnet (replaces foxea@vtvax3)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 88 08:39:18 SST
From: Desai <ISSAD@NUSVM.bitnet>
Subject: Looking for Public domain software
...
Are there any hypertext / hypemedia software in the public domain
(source inclusive) that can be obtained for a reasonable fee? Any input will
be useful and thanks in advance.
With best regards
Desai
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 88 12:54:49 EDT
From: David Johnson <DKJOHNS@ERENJ>
Subject: books on information science
Can anyone tell me the name and whereabouts of any bookstore that
regularly maintains a stock, preferably large and varied, of information-
science books???
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 88 12:21:52 EDT
From: pattison@harvard.harvard.edu
Subject: IR courses in the Boston area?
A friend asked me to post this, I will handle email responses.
Dr. Fox:
I am sending you this note via the address of an officemate of mine,
as I do not yet have one. My name is Bill Hersh, and I am currently doing
a research fellowship in Medical Informatics at Harvard School of Public
Health. In case you don't know, Medical Informatics is an interdisciplinary
field that does research into computer applications in medicine.
[Note: Yes, I am familiar with some work in that field and
am glad that there in interest in bringing the two areas
together since they have so many points in common. - Ed]
My personal area of interest is in the development of interactive electronic
textbooks of medicine. In my reviewing of the literature, I have come across
the field of Information Retrieval, and the work that you, Salton, and others
have done is been very interesting to me.
[Note: Nancy Roderer at Columbia is doing some interesting
work in connection with their IAIMS effort. At Columbia
there is development of CTIM which relates to your area - Ed.]
I am writing you this note to inquire if you know of any people doing
work or giving courses in IR in the Boston area. My fellowship covers tuition
for courses, so I would be able to take any courses from any school in the
Boston area. I have a good background in computer science, and I have already
read Salton's book, so I think I would be able to handle any course in the
subject.
[Note: I hope Dick Marcus at MIT can help with this - Ed]
In addition to reading Salton's book and many recent articles in
Information Processing and Management and the Journal of ASIS, I have also
joined SIGIR. Would you recommend any other avenues in which to become more
knowledgeable in the field?
[Note: You have a good start. There are articles in many
places that are hard to track down for people entering the
field. The Annual Review of Information Science and
Technology is a good way to find those works since it has
such a carefully done bibliography with each article. I
suggest you come to IR conferences such as the SIGIR one in
Cambridge MA in June 1989 - and invite SIGIR to have a panel
at some of the Medical Informatics conferences - perhaps
some jointly sponsored event would help bridge the gap? - Ed.]
William Hersh, MD
Fellow in Medical Informatics
Dept. of Radiology Computer Science
Brigham and Women's Hospital
75 Francis St.
Boston, MA 02115
617-732-6505
------------------------------
From: microsof!jerryd@beaver.cs.washington.edu
Subject: CDROMs and comparison articles
Date: Mon Oct 10 14:46:55 1988
...
Are there any other recent discs or reports out comparing
commercially available information retrieval engines or systems?
(I've subscribed to SIGIR, so I'll be seeing upcoming information
there.)
Jerry J. Dunietz
Microsoft Corporation
uw-beaver!microsoft!jerryd (UUCP)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 88 14:57 EDT
From: <JUNGER@CWRU>
Subject: RE: IRList Digest V4 #44 special format codes
I noticed that in this Digest the symbols ".]" and ".[" appeared
in the leftmost column. It has been my experience that some mailers
or--more likely--gateways refuse to deal with lines starting with a ".".
I would be interested in knowing if Digest V4 #44 got through
unscathed to all the intended recipients on the list.
Peter Junger JUNGER@CWRU
[Note: I moved the period to column 2 in the next set -
hope that helps - Ed.]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 88 12:55:53 edt
From: whayl@vtopus.cs.vt.edu (Whay Choong Lee)
Subject: Experimental Comparison of ... Interpreting Boolean Queries
Experimental Comparison of Schemes for Interpreting Boolean Queries
Whay C. Lee and Edward A. Fox
Department of Computer Science
VPI&SU, Blacksburg, VA 24061
ABSTRACT
The standard interpretation of the logical operators in a Boolean
retrieval system is in general too strict. A standard Boolean
query rarely comes close to retrieving all and only those
documents which are relevant to the user. An AND query
is often too narrow and an OR query is often too broad. The
choice of the AND results in retrieving on the left end of a typical
average recall-precision graph, while the choice of the OR results in
retrieving on the right end, implying a tradeoff between precision
and recall. This study basically examines various proposed schemes,
the P-norm, Classical Fuzzy-Set, MMM, Paice and TIRS, which provide
means to soften the interpretation of the logical operators, and thus
to attain both high precision and high recall search performance.
Each of the above schemes has shown great improvement over the
standard Boolean scheme in terms of retrieval effectiveness.
The differences in retrieval effectiveness between P-norm, Paice
and MMM are shown to be relatively small. However, related
performance results obtained gives evidence of the ranking: P-norm,
Paice, MMM and then TIRS.
This study employs the INNER PRODUCT function for computing the
similarity between a document point and a query point in TIRS. There
may be other choices of similarity functions for TIRS, but
irrespective of the function used, the TIRS approach, having to deal
with associated min-terms rather than the original query, is difficult
to realize and involves far greater computational overhead than the other
schemes.
The P-norm scheme, being a distance-based approach, has greater
intuitive appeal than the Paice or MMM scheme. However, in terms
of computational overhead required of each scheme, both the Paice
and MMM are superior to P-norm. The Paice and MMM schemes are
essentially variations of the classical fuzzy-set scheme. Both
perform much better than the classical fuzzy-set scheme in
terms of retrieval effectiveness.
CR Categories and Subject Descriptors:
H.3.1 [:hp3.Information Storage and Retrieval:ehp3.]:
Content Analysis and Indexing,
H.3.3 [:hp3.Information Storage and Retrieval:ehp3.]:
Information Search and Retrieval -- Query Formulation,
Retrieval Models, Search Process,
H.3.6 [:hp3.Information Storage and Retrieval:ehp3.]:
Library Automation.
General terms: algorithms, experimentation, design, performance
Additional Keywords and Phrases: Boolean retrieval, logical
operators, P-norm, Paice, MMM, TIRS, Fuzzy-set, effectiveness
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 88 09:13 EDT
From: Edward A. Fox <fox>
Subject: New technical report on Perfect Hashing
Tech report 88-30 has title "A More Cost Effective Algorithm for
Finding Perfect Hash Functions" with authors:
Edward A. Fox, Qi-Fan Chen, Lenwood Heath, Sanjeev Datta
[Note: this is similar to paper that will be presented at
ACM CSC 89 in February. It is about an O(n^3) algorithm
that was used in a beta copy of Virginia Disc One for
developing perfect hash functions to over 300 sets, each
with 256 words - Ed.]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 88 22:43 5
From: ORBETON@nuhub.acs.northeastern.edu
Subject: DP88 Adv Prog Info [Sent as final reminder - Ed.]
ACM Conference on Document Processing Systems
December 5 - 9, 1988
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Advance Program Information
The ACM Conference on Document Processing Systems is an inaugural,
international conference bringing together researchers, developers, and users
to examine the theory, development, and application of document processing
systems for generating, disseminating, searching, and viewing information. It
is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest
Groups on Graphics (SIGGRAPH), Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), and Office
Information Systems (SIGOIS), in cooperation with the Los Alamos National
Laboratory and SIGIR (Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval).
Technical Program
The technical program offers 24 papers describing recent work relating to
significant problems, including research results or the innovative application
of document processing technology. A representative sampling includes:
+ Conceptual Documents: A Mechanism for Specifying Active Views in Hypertext
+ Translating Among Processable Multi-Media Document Formats Using ODA
+ Adding Browsing Semantics to the Hypertext Model
+ Automatic Text Indexing Using Complex Identifiers
+ Formalizing the Figural: Aspects of a Foundation for Document Manipulation
+ Why Switch from Paper to Electronic Manuals? A Military Perspective
+ Evolution of an SGML Application Generator
+ Auto-Updating as a Technical Documentation Tool
+ The LaserROM Project: A Case Study in Document Processing Systems
+ An Adaptation of Dataflow Methods for WYSIWYG Document Processing
Courses
On Monday, December 5, nine courses will provide an in-depth look at a wide
range of topics related to document processing issues and techniques. The
courses are arranged into six full-day tracks. Since seating is limited, early
registration is strongly encouraged. The courses are offered in addition to
the conference itself and carry separate fee schedules. Course offerings are
as follows:
Structured Documents. Richard Furuta, University of Maryland, Vania Joloboff,
BULL Research Center, Vincent Quint, INRIA. For those interested in a
conceptual framework that organizes the field of structured document processing
systems.
Introduction To The Office Document Architecture (ODA). Heather Brown,
University of Kent at Canterbury. A general introduction to ODA concentrating
on the document structures provided and the types of content currently allowed
(especially text).
Implementation And Conformance Of ODA/ODIF Systems. Wally Wedel, NBI, Inc.,
Frank Dawson, IBM Corporation. An introduction to the recently approved
international standard entitled Information Processing--Document Architecture
and Interchange Format.
Introduction To The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Donald D.
Chamberlin, IBM Almaden Research Center. Introduces the SGML Standard,
including its purpose, its current status, and the syntax of the language
itself from the points of view authors and designers.
Implementation Of SGML Systems. Lynne A. Price, Hewlett Packard, Jim Heath,
National Bureau of Standards, Peter Sharpe, SoftQuad Inc. Presents the
programmer's view and discusses possible design strategies for SGML software,
and shares experiences with prospective implementors.
Digital Typography: A Primer. Richard Rubinstein, Digital Equipment
Corporation. Provides the basic background necessary to understand the issues
in digital output of text.
Introduction To Hypertext And Hypermedia. Jakob Nielsen, Technical University
of Denmark. Provides an introduction to the concepts of hypertext
(non-sequential writing) and hypermedia (multi-media hypertext).
CD-ROM Publishing And Access. Edward A. Fox, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University. Addresses two phases of document processing: document
production and document dissemination.
Advanced Methods Of Document Retrieval. Norbert Fuhr, Technische Hochschule
Darmstadt. Shows how modern IR techniques can be adapted to multi-media,
multi-type document bases in order to increase retrieval effectiveness as well
as user friendliness.
Demonstrations and Panel Sessions
Demonstrations by their creators of 12 systems, closely related to the
technical program and tutorials topics, will provide attendees with a close-up
look at new experimental and commercial systems and concepts. Eight panels
will stimulate thought and discussion. They will provide an alternative format
for presenting varying views.
Book Exhibit and Technical Tour
Books and technical journals in the area of document processing systems from a
variety of publishers will be available for browsing and purchase or
subscription. You are invited to Los Alamos National Laboratory on Friday,
December 9 to visit the Bradbury Science Museum and, if you are a U.S. citizen,
the Central Computing Facility, which houses one of the world's largest
scientific computing centers. Transportation will be provided.
Social Functions
Course attendees are invited to a reception Sunday evening. Technical program
attendees are invited to a reception Tuesday evening at the Museum of
International Folk Art.
Registration Information
Space is limited for the technical program and all courses. On-site
registration is available only as space permits. Member Discounts are
available to current ACM, SIGGRAPH, SIGCHI, SIGOIS, or SIGIR members. Students
are especially invited to attend this conference and will benefit from a
discounted fee schedule. Interested students are sought for volunteer work at
the conference in exchange for complimentary registration fees.
Fees -- Technical Program
By Nov 7 After Nov 7
Member $225 $300
Non-member $300 $375
Student $100 $100
Fees -- Courses
Member $200 $275
Non-member $230 $305
Student $100 $100
Santa Fe
Santa Fe, so rich in tradition and cultural diversity, has been called "The
City Different." Santa Fe, at 7,000 feet above sea level, is nestled in
northern New Mexico's desert highlands at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains, where the cultures of the Indians, Hispanics, and Anglos meet and
mingle. With its unique character and charm, Santa Fe resembles an old-world
village. Distinct from every other American city, Santa Fe proves to its
visitors that you don't have to leave the country to visit an enchanting
foreign land.
For a copy of the Advance Program which is available now, contact Peter
Orbeton, Lotus Development, 161 First St., Cambridge, MA 02142; e-mail
Orbeton.chi@xerox.com
[Note - registration materials should be sent to
Dr. Lynne A. Price
Registration Chair
Hewlett-Packard
3200 Hillview Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94304
Note: see V4 #51 for program info - Ed.]
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END OF IRList Digest
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