Relevancy 301 – The Graduate Level Course by Paul Nelson.
From the post:
So, I was going to write an article entitled “Relevancy 101”, but that seemed too shallow for what has become a major area of academic research. And so here we are with a Graduate-Level Course. Grab your book-bag, some Cheetos and a Mountain Dew, and let’s kick back and talk search engine relevancy.
I have blogged about relevancy before (see “What does ‘relevant’ mean?)”, but that was a more philosophical discussion of relevancy. The purpose of this blog is to go in-depth into the different types of relevancy, how they’re computed, and what they’re good for. I’ll do my best to avoid math, but no guarantees.
A very good introduction to measures of “relevancy,” most of which are no longer used.
Pay particular attention to Paul’s remarks about the weaknesses of inverse document frequency (IDF).
Before Paul posts part 2, how do you determine the relevance of documents?
Exercise:
Pick a subject covered by a journal or magazine, one with twelve issues each year and review a year’s worth of issues for “relevant” articles.
Assuming the journal is available electronically, does the search engine suggest your other “relevant” articles?
If it doesn’t, can you determine why it recommended different articles?