The economics in interactive information retrieval

Searching is inherently an interactive process usually requiring numerous iterations of querying and assessing in order to find the desired amount of relevant information. Essentially, the search process can be viewed as a combination of inputs (queries and assessments) which are used to “produce” output (relevance). Under this view, it is possible to adapt microeconomic theory to analyze and understand the dynamics of Interactive Information Retrieval. In this paper, we treat the search process as an economics problem and conduct extensive simulations on TREC test collections analyzing various combinations of inputs in the “production” of relevance. The analysis reveals that the total Cumulative Gain obtained during the course of a search session is functionally related to querying and assessing. Furthermore, this relationship can be characterized mathematically by the Cobbs-Douglas production function. Subsequent analysis using cost models, that are grounded using cognitive...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: SIGIR
• Authors: Leif Azzopardi
• Keywords: Information Storage And Retrieval, Information Technology, Interactive Information Retrieval, SIGIR 2011, Simulation Evaluation