Title
Measuring the variability in effectiveness of a retrieval system
Abstract
A typical evaluation of a retrieval system involves computing an effectiveness metric, e.g. average precision, for each topic of a test collection and then using the average of the metric, e.g. mean average precision, to express the overall effectiveness. However, averages do not capture all the important aspects of effectiveness and, used alone, may not be an informative measure of systems’ effectiveness. Indeed, in addition to the average, we need to consider the variation of effectiveness across topics. We refer to this variation as the variability in effectiveness. In this paper we explore how the variance of a metric can be used as a measure of variability. We define a variability metric, and illustrate how the metric can be used in practice.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1007/978-3-642-13084-7_7
IRFC
Keywords
DocType
Volume
test collection,informative measure,retrieval system,overall effectiveness,effectiveness metric,important aspect,average precision,typical evaluation,mean average precision
Conference
6107
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
0302-9743
3-642-13083-6
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
13
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mehdi Hosseini1543.77
Ingemar Cox23652795.60
Natasa Milic-Frayling391775.24
Vishwa Vinay424515.94