IR - Ricardo Unit III

Modern Information Retrieval
Chapter 8
Text Classification
Introduction
A Characterization of Text Classification
Unsupervised Algorithms
Supervised Algorithms
Feature Selection or Dimensionality Reduction
Evaluation Metrics
Organizing the Classes - Taxonomies
Text Classification, Modern Information Retrieval, Addison Wesley, 2009 – p. 1

Introduction
Ancient problem for librarians
storing documents for later retrieval
With larger collections, need to label the documents
assign an unique identifier to each document
does not allow findings documents on a subject or topic
To allow searching documents on a subject or topic

group documents by common topics
name these groups with meaningful labels
each labeled group is call a class

Introduction
Text classification
process of associating documents with classes
if classes are referred to as categories
process is called text categorization
we consider classification and categorization the same process
Related problem: partition docs into subsets, no labels

since each subset has no label, it is not a class
instead, each subset is called a cluster
the partitioning process is called clustering
we consider clustering as a simpler variant of text classification

Introduction
Text classification
a means to organize information
Consider a large engineering company
thousands of documents are produced
if properly organized, they can be used for business decisions
to organize large document collection, text classification is used
Text classification
key technology in modern enterprises

Machine Learning
Machine Learning
algorithms that learn patterns in the data
patterns learned allow making predictions relative to new data
learning algorithms use training data and can be of three types
supervised learning
unsupervised learning
semi-supervised learning

Machine Learning
Supervised learning
training data provided as input
training data: classes for input documents
Unsupervised learning
no training data is provided
Examples:
neural network models
independent component analysis
clustering
Semi-supervised learning
small training data
combined with larger amount of unlabeled data

The Text Classification Problem
A classifier can be formally defined
D: a collection of documents
C = {c1 , c2 , . . . , cL }: a set of L classes with their respective labels
a text classifier is a binary function F : D × C → {0, 1}, which
assigns to each pair [dj , cp ], dj ∈ D and cp ∈ C, a value of
1, if dj is a member of class cp
0, if dj is not a member of class cp
Broad definition, admits supervised and unsupervised

algorithms
For high accuracy, use supervised algorithm
multi-label: one or more labels are assigned to each document
single-label: a single class is assigned to each document

The Text Classification Problem
Classification function F
defined as binary function of document-class pair [dj , cp ]
can be modified to compute degree of membership of dj in cp
documents as candidates for membership in class cp
candidates sorted by decreasing values of F(dj , cp )

Text Classification Algorithms
Unsupervised algorithms we discuss

Supervised algorithms depend on a training set
set of classes with examples of documents for each class
examples determined by human specialists
training set used to learn a classification function

The larger the number of training examples, the better
is the fine tuning of the classifier
Overfitting: classifier becomes specific to the training examples
To evaluate the classifier
use a set of unseen objects
commonly referred to as test set

Supervised classification algorithms we discuss

Unsupervised Algorithms

Clustering
Input data
set of documents to classify
not even class labels are provided
Task of the classifier
separate documents into subsets (clusters) automatically
separating procedure is called clustering

Clustering
Clustering of hotel Web pages in Hawaii

Clustering
To obtain classes, assign labels to clusters

Clustering
Class labels can be generated automatically
but are different from labels specified by humans
usually, of much lower quality
thus, solving the whole classification problem with no human
intervention is hard
If class labels are provided, clustering is more effective

K-means Clustering
Input: number K of clusters to be generated
Each cluster represented by its documents centroid
K-Means algorithm:
partition docs among the K clusters
each document assigned to cluster with closest centroid
recompute centroids
repeat process until centroids do not change

K-means in Batch Mode
Batch mode: all documents classified before
recomputing centroids
Let document dj be represented as vector d~j
d~j = (w1,j , w2,j , . . . , wt,j )
where
wi,j : weight of term ki in document dj
t: size of the vocabulary

1. Initial step.
select K docs randomly as centroids (of the K clusters)
~ p = d~j
△
2. Assignment Step.
assign each document to cluster with closest centroid
distance function computed as inverse of the similarity
similarity between dj and cp , use cosine formula
~ p • d~j
△
sim(dj , cp ) =
~ p | × |d~j |
|△

3. Update Step.
recompute centroids of each cluster cp
~p= 1
d~j
X
△
size(cp )
d~j ∈cp
4. Final Step.
repeat assignment and update steps until no centroid changes

K-means Online
Recompute centroids after classification of each
individual doc
1. Initial Step.
select K documents randomly
use them as initial centroids
2. Assignment Step.
For each document dj repeat
assign document dj to the cluster with closest centroid
recompute the centroid of that cluster to include dj
3. Final Step. Repeat assignment step until no
centroid changes.
It is argued that online K-means works better than
batch K-means

Bisecting K-means
Algorithm
build a hierarchy of clusters
at each step, branch into two clusters
Apply K-means repeatedly, with K=2

1. Initial Step. assign all documents to a single cluster
2. Split Step.
select largest cluster
apply K-means to it, with K = 2
3. Selection Step.
if stop criteria satisfied (e.g., no cluster larger than
pre-defined size), stop execution
go back to Split Step
Hierarchical Clustering
Goal: to create a hierarchy of clusters by either
decomposing a large cluster into smaller ones, or
agglomerating previously defined clusters into larger ones

General hierarchical clustering algorithm
1. Input
a set of N documents to be clustered
an N × N similarity (distance) matrix
2. Assign each document to its own cluster
N clusters are produced, containing one document each
3. Find the two closest clusters
merge them into a single cluster
number of clusters reduced to N − 1
4. Recompute distances between new cluster and each old cluster
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until one single cluster of size N is
produced

Step 4 introduces notion of similarity or distance
between two clusters
Method used for computing cluster distances defines
three variants of the algorithm
single-link
complete-link
average-link

dist(cp , cr ): distance between two clusters cp and cr
dist(dj , dl ): distance between docs dj and dl
Single-Link Algorithm
dist(cp , cr ) = min dist(dj , dl )
∀ dj ∈cp ,dl ∈cr
Complete-Link Algorithm
dist(cp , cr ) = max dist(dj , dl )
∀ dj ∈cp ,dl ∈cr
Average-Link Algorithm
1 X X
dist(cp , cr ) = dist(dj , dl )
np + nr
dj ∈cp dl ∈cr

Naive Text Classification
Classes and their labels are given as input
no training examples
Naive Classification
Input:
collection D of documents
set C = {c1 , c2 , . . . , cL } of L classes and their labels
Algorithm: associate one or more classes of C with each doc in D
match document terms to class labels
permit partial matches
improve coverage by defining alternative class labels i.e.,
synonyms

Naive Text Classification
Text Classification by Direct Match
1. Input:
D: collection of documents to classify
C = {c1 , c2 , . . . , cL }: set of L classes with their labels
2. Represent
each document dj by a weighted vector d~j
each class cp by a weighted vector ~cp (use the labels)
3. For each document dj ∈ D do
retrieve classes cp ∈ C whose labels contain terms of dj
for each pair [dj , cp ] retrieved, compute vector ranking as
d~j • c~p
sim(dj , cp ) =
|d~j | × |c~p |
associate dj classes cp with highest values of sim(dj , cp )


Depend on a training set
Dt ⊂ D: subset of training documents
T : Dt × C → {0, 1}: training set function
Assigns to each pair [dj , cp ], dj ∈ Dt and cp ∈ C a value of
1, if dj ∈ cp , according to judgement of human specialists
0, if dj 6∈ cp , according to judgement of human specialists
Training set function T is used to fine tune the classifier

The training phase of a classifier

To evaluate the classifier, use a test set
subset of docs with no intersection with training set
classes to documents determined by human specialists
Evaluation is done in a two steps process
use classifier to assign classes to documents in test set
compare classes assigned by classifier with those specified by
human specialists

Classification and evaluation processes

Once classifier has been trained and validated
can be used to classify new and unseen documents
if classifier is well tuned, classification is highly effective


Decision Trees
Training set used to build classification rules
organized as paths in a tree
tree paths used to classify documents outside training set
rules, amenable to human interpretation, facilitate interpretation
of results

Basic Technique
Consider the small relational database below
Id Play Outlook Temperature Humidity Windy
1 yes rainy cool normal false
2 no rainy cool normal true
3 yes overcast hot high false
4 no sunny mild high false
Training set 5 yes rainy cool normal false
6 yes sunny cool normal false
7 yes rainy cool normal false
8 yes sunny hot normal false
9 yes overcast mild high true
10 no sunny mild high true
Test Instance 11 ? sunny cool high false
Decision Tree (DT) allows predicting values of a given

attribute

Basic Technique
DT to predict values of attribute Play
Given: Outlook, Humidity, Windy

Basic Technique
Internal nodes → attribute names
Edges → attribute values
Traversal of DT → value for attribute “Play”.
(Outlook = sunny) ∧ (Humidity = high) → (P lay = no)
Id Play Outlook Temperature Humidity Windy

Test Instance 11 ? sunny cool high false

Basic Technique
Predictions based on seen instances
New instance that violates seen patterns will lead to
erroneous prediction
Example database works as training set for building the
decision tree

The Splitting Process
DT for a database can be built using recursive splitting
strategy
Goal: build DT for attribute Play
select one of the attributes, other than Play, as root
use attribute values to split tuples into subsets
for each subset of tuples, select a second splitting attribute
repeat

Step by step splitting process

Strongly affected by order of split attributes
depending on order, tree might become unbalanced
Balanced or near-balanced trees are more efficient for
predicting attribute values
Rule of thumb: select attributes that reduce average
path length

Classification of Documents
For document classification
with each internal node associate an index term
with each leave associate a document class
with the edges associate binary predicates that indicate
presence/absence of index term

V : a set of nodes
Tree T = (V, E, r): an acyclic graph on V where
E ⊆ V × V is the set of edges
Let edge(vi , vj ) ∈ E
vi is the father node
vj is the child node
r ∈ V is called the root of T
I: set of all internal nodes
I: set of all leaf nodes

Define
K = {k1 , k2 , . . . , kt }: set of index terms of a doc collection
C: set of all classes
P : set of logical predicates on the index terms
DT = (V, E; r; lI , lL , lE ): a six-tuple where

(V ; E; r): a tree whose root is r
lI : I → K: a function that associates with each internal node of
the tree one or more index terms
lL : I → C: a function that associates with each non-internal
(leaf) node a class cp ∈ C
lE : E → P : a function that associates with each edge of the tree
a logical predicate from P

Decision tree model for class cp can be built using a
recursive splitting strategy
first step: associate all documents with the root
second step: select index terms that provide a good separation
of the documents
third step: repeat until tree complete

Terms ka , kb , kc , and kh have been selected for first split

To select splitting terms use
information gain or entropy
Selection of terms with high information gain tends to

increase number of branches at a given level, and
reduce number of documents in each resultant subset
yield smaller and less complex decision trees

Problem: missing or unknown values
appear when document to be classified does not contain some
terms used to build the DT
not clear which branch of the tree should be traversed
Solution:
delay construction of tree until new document is presented for
classification
build tree based on features presented in this document, avoiding
the problem

The kNN Classifier

The kNN Classifier
k NN (k -nearest neighbor): on-demand or lazy
classifier
lazy classifiers do not build a classification model a priori
classification done when new document dj is presented
based on the classes of the k nearest neighbors of dj
determine the k nearest neighbors of dj in a training set
use the classes of these neighbors to determine a class for dj

The kNN Classifier
An example of a 4-NN classification process

k NN: to each document-class pair [dj , cp ] assign a score
X
Sdj ,cp = similarity(dj , dt ) × T (dt , cp )
dt ∈Nk (dj )
where
Nk (dj ): set of the k nearest neighbors of dj in training set
similarity(dj , dt ): cosine formula of Vector model (for instance)
T (dt , cp ): training set function returns
1, if dt belongs to class cp
0, otherwise
Classifier assigns to dj class(es) cp with highest
score(s)

Problem with k NN: performance
classifier has to compute distances between document to be
classified and all training documents
another issue is how to choose the “best” value for k

The Rocchio Classifier

The Rocchio Classifier
Rocchio relevance feedback
modifies user query based on user feedback
produces new query that better approximates the interest of the
user
can be adapted to text classification
Interpret training set as feedback information

terms that belong to training docs of a given class cp are said to
provide positive feedback
terms that belong to training docs outside class cp are said to
provide negative feedback
Feedback information summarized by a centroid vector

New document classified by distance to centroid

Basic Technique
Each document dj represented as a weighted term
vector d~j
d~j = (w1,j , w2,j , . . . , wt,j )
wi,j : weight of term ki in document dj

t: size of the vocabulary

Rochio classifier for a class cp is computed as a
centroid given by
β X ~ γ
d~l
X
~cp = dj −
np Nt − n p
dj ∈cp dl 6∈cp
where
np : number of documents in class cp
Nt : total number of documents in the training set
terms of training docs in class cp : positive weights
terms of docs outside class cp : negative weights

plus signs: terms of
training docs in class cp
minus signs: terms of
training docs outside
class cp
Classifier assigns to each document-class [dj , cp ] a

score
S(dj , cp ) = |~cp − d~j |
Classes with highest scores are assigned to dj

Rocchio in a Query Zone
For specific domains, negative feedback might move
the centroid away from the topic of interest

Rocchio in a Query Zone
To reduce this effect, decrease number of negative
feedback docs
use only most positive docs among all docs that provide
negative feedback
these are usually referred to as near-positive documents
Near-positive documents are selected as follows

~cp+ : centroid of the training documents that belong to class cp
training docs outside cp : measure their distances to ~cp+
smaller distances to centroid: near-positive documents

The Probabilistic Naive Bayes
Classifier

Naive Bayes
Probabilistic classifiers
assign to each document-class pair [dj , cp ] a probability P (cp |d~j )
~ P (cp ) × P (d~j |cp )

P (cp |dj ) =
P (d~j )
P (d~j ): probability that randomly selected doc is d~j

P (cp ): probability that randomly selected doc is in class cp
assign to new and unseen docs classes with highest probability
estimates

Naive Bayes Classifier
For efficiency, simplify computation of P (d~j |cp )
most common simplification: independence of index terms
classifiers are called Naive Bayes classifiers
Many variants of Naive Bayes classifiers

best known is based on the classic probabilistic model
doc dj represented by vector of binary weights
d~j = (w1,j , w2,j , . . . , wt,j )


 1 if term k occurs in document d
i j
wi,j =
 0 otherwise

To each pair [dj , cp ], the classifier assigns a score
P (cp |d~j )
S(dj , cp ) =
P (cp |d~j )
P (cp |d~j ): probability that document dj belongs to class cp
P (cp |d~j ): probability that document dj does not belong to cp
P (cp |d~j ) + P (cp |d~j ) = 1

Applying Bayes, we obtain
P (d~j |cp )
S(dj , cp ) ∼
P (d~j |cp )
Independence assumption
P (d~j |cp ) =
Y Y
P (ki |cp ) × P (k i |cp )
ki ∈d~j ki 6∈d~j
P (d~j |cp ) =
Y Y
P (ki |cp ) × P (k i |cp )

Equation for the score S(dj , cp )

X piP 1 − qiP
S(dj , cp ) ∼ wi,j log + log
1 − piP qiP
ki
piP = P (ki |cp )
qiP = P (ki |cp )
piP : probability that ki belongs to doc randomly selected from cp

qiP : probability that ki belongs to doc randomly selected from
outside cp

Estimate piP and qiP from set Dt of training docs
P
1+ dj |dj ∈Dt ∧ki ∈dj P (cp |dj ) 1 + ni,p
piP = P =
2+ dj ∈Dt P (cp |dj ) 2 + np
P
1+ dj |dj ∈Dt ∧ki ∈dj P (cp |dj ) 1 + (ni − ni,p )
qiP = P =
2+ dj ∈Dt P (cp |dj ) 2 + (Nt − np )
ni,p , ni , np , Nt : see probabilistic model

P (cp |dj ) ∈ {0, 1} and P (cp |dj ) ∈ {0, 1}: given by training set
Binary Independence Naive Bayes classifier

assigns to each doc dj classes with higher S(dj , cp ) scores

Multinomial Naive Bayes Classifier
Naive Bayes classifier: term weights are binary
Variant: consider term frequency inside docs
To classify doc dj in class cp
P (c p ) × P ( d~j |cp )
P (cp |d~j ) =
P (d~j )
P (d~j ): prior document probability
P (cp ): prior class probability
P
dj ∈Dt P (cp |dj ) np
P (cp ) = =
Nt Nt
P (cp |dj ) ∈ {0, 1}: given by training set of size Nt

Prior document probability given by
L
P (d~j ) = Pprior (d~j |cp ) × P (cp )
X
p=1
where
Pprior (d~j |cp ) =

Y Y
P (ki |cp ) × [1 − P (ki |cp )]
P
1+ dj |dj ∈Dt ∧ki ∈dj P (cp |dj ) 1 + ni,p
P (ki |cp ) = P =
2+ dj ∈Dt P (cp |dj ) 2 + np

These equations do not consider term frequencies
To include term frequencies, modify P (d~j |cp )
consider that terms of doc dj ∈ cp are drawn from known
distribution
each single term draw
Bernoulli trial with probability of success given by P (ki |cp )
each term ki is drawn as many times as its doc frequency fi,j

Multinomial probabilistic term distribution
Y [P (ki |cp )]fi,j

P (d~j |cp ) = Fj ! ×
fi,j !
ki ∈dj
X
Fj = fi,j
ki ∈dj
Fj : a measure of document length
Term probabilities estimated from training set Dt

P
dj ∈Dt fi,j P (cp |dj )
P (ki |cp ) = P P
∀ki dj ∈Dt fi,j P (cp |dj )

The SVM Classifier

SVM Basic Technique – Intuition
Support Vector Machines (SVMs)
a vector space method for binary classification problems
documents represented in t-dimensional space
find a decision surface (hyperplane) that best separate
documents of two classes
new document classified by its position relative to hyperplane

Simple 2D example: training documents linearly
separable

Line s—The Decision Hyperplane
maximizes distances to closest docs of each class
it is the best separating hyperplane
Delimiting
Hyperplanes
parallel dashed lines that
delimit region where to
look for a solution

Lines that cross the delimiting hyperplanes
candidates to be selected as the decision hyperplane
lines that are parallel to delimiting hyperplanes: best candidates
Support vectors:
documents that belong
to, and define, the
delimiting hyperplanes

Our example in a 2-dimensional system of coordinates

Let,
Hw : a hyperplane that separates docs in classes ca and cb
ma : distance of Hw to the closest document in class ca
mb : distance of Hw to the closest document in class cb
ma + mb : margin m of the SVM
The decision hyperplane maximizes the margin m

Hyperplane r : x − 4 = 0 separates docs in two sets
its distances to closest docs in either class is 1
thus, its margin m is 2
Hyperplane s : y + x −√
7=0
has margin equal to 3 2
maximum for this case
s is the decision hyperplane

n
Lines and Hyperplanes in the R
Let Rn refer to an n-dimensional space with origin in O
generic point Z is
represented as
~z = (z1 , z2 , . . . , zn )
zi , 1 ≤ i ≤ n, are real
variables
Similar notation to refer to
specific fixed points such as
A, B, H, P, and Q

n
Line s in the direction of a vector w
~ that contains a given
point P
Parametric equation for this line
s : ~z = tw
~ + p~
where −∞ < t < +∞

n
Hyperplane Hw that contains a point H and is
perpendicular to a given vector w
~
Its normal equation is
Hw : (~z − ~h)w
~ =0
Can be rewritten as
Hw : ~zw
~ +k =0
where w~ and k = −~hw

~ need
to be determined

n
P : projection of point A on hyperplane Hw
AP : distance of point A to hyperplane Hw
Parametric equation of line
determined by A and P
line(AP ) : ~z = tw
~ + ~a
where −∞ < t < +∞

n
For point P specifically
p~ = tp w
~ + ~a
where tp is value of t for point P
Since P ∈ Hw
(tp w
~ + ~a)w
~ +k =0
Solving for tp ,
~aw
~ +k
tp = −
~2
|w|
where |w|
~ is the vector norm

n
Substitute tp into Equation of point P
~aw
~ +k w
~
~a − p~ = ×
|w|
~ |w|
~
Since w/|
~ w|~ is a unit vector
~aw
~ +k
AP = |~a − p~| =
|w|
~

n
How signs vary with regard to a hyperplane Hw
region above Hw : points ~z that make ~zw
~ + k positive
region below Hw : points ~z that make ~zw
~ + k negative

SVM Technique – Formalization
The SVM optimization problem: given support
vectors such as ~a and ~b, find hyperplane Hw that
maximizes margin m

O : origin of the coordinate system
point A: a doc from class ca (belongs to delimiting hyperplane Ha )
point B: a doc from class cb (belongs to delimiting hyperplane Hb )
Hw is determined by a
point H (represented by
~h) and by a
perpendicular vector w
~
neither ~h nor w
~ are known
a priori

P : projection of point A on hyperplane Hw
AP : distance of point A to hyperplane Hw
~aw
~ +k
AP =
|w|
~
BQ: distance of point B to

hyperplane Hw
~bw
~ +k
BQ = −
|w|
~

Margin m of the SVM
m = AP + BQ
is independent of size of w
~
Vectors w
~ of varying sizes
maximize m
Impose restrictions on |w|
~
~aw~ +k = 1
~bw
~ + k = −1

Restrict solution to hyperplanes that split margin m in
the middle
Under these conditions,
1 1
m= +
|w|
~ |w|
~
2
m=
|w|
~

Let,
T = {. . . , [cj , ~zj ], [cj+1 , ~zj+1 ], . . .}: the training set
cj : class associated with point ~zj representing doc dj
Then,
SVM Optimization Problem:

maximize m = 2/|w|
~
subject to
w~
~ zj + b ≥ +1 if cj = ca
w~
~ zj + b ≤ −1 if cj = cb
Support vectors: vectors that make equation equal to

either +1 or -1
Let us consider again our simple example case
Optimization problem:
maximize m = 2/|w|
~
subject to
w
~ · (5, 5) + b = +1
w
~ · (1, 3) + b = −1

p
If we represent vector w ~ = x2 + y 2
~ as (x, y) then |w|
√
m = 3 2: distance between delimiting hyperplanes
Thus,
√ p
3 2 = 2/ x2 + y 2
5x + 5y + b = +1
x + 3y + b = −1

Maximum of 2/|w|
~
b = −21/9
x = 1/3, y = 1/3
equation of decision hyperplane
(1/3, 1/3) · (x, y) + (−21/9) = 0
or
y+x−7=0

Classification of doc dj (i.e., ~zj ) decided by
f (~zj ) = sign(w~
~ zj + b)
f (~zj ) = ” + ” : dj belongs to class ca

f (~zj ) = ” − ” : dj belongs to class cb
SVM classifier might enforce margin to reduce errors

a new document dj is classified
in class ca : only if w~
~ zj + b > 1
in class cb : only if w~
~ zj + b < −1

SVM with Multiple Classes
SVMs can only take binary decisions
a document belongs or not to a given class
With multiple classes

reduce the multi-class problem to binary classification
natural way: one binary classification problem per class
To classify a new document dj

run classification for each class
each class cp paired against all others
classes of dj : those with largest margins

SVM with Multiple Classes
Another solution
consider binary classifier for each pair of classes cp and cq
all training documents of one class: positive examples
all documents from the other class: negative examples

Non-Linearly Separable Cases
SVM has no solutions when there is no hyperplane that
separates the data points into two disjoint sets
This condition is known as non-linearly separable case
In this case, two viable solutions are

soft margin approach: allow classifier to make few mistakes
kernel approach: map original data into higher dimensional
space (where mapped data is linearly separable)

Soft Margin Approach
Allow classifier to make a few mistakes
2 P
maximize m = |w| ~ +γ j ej
subject to
w~
~ zj + k ≥ +1 - ej , if cj = ca
w~
~ zj + k ≤ −1 + ej , if cj = cb
∀j , ej ≥ 0
Optimization is now trade-off between

margin width
amount of error
parameter γ balances importance of these two factors

Kernel Approach
Compute max margin in transformed feature space
minimize m = 12 ∗ |w|~2
subject to
f (w,
~ ~zj ) + k ≥ +1, if cj = ca
f (w,
~ ~zj ) + k ≤ −1, if cj = cb
Conventional SVM case
f (w,
~ ~zj ) = w~
~ zj , the kernel, is dot product of input vectors
Transformed SVM case
the kernel is a modified map function
polynomial kernel: f (w, ~ xj + 1)d
~ ~xj ) = (w~
radial basis function: f (w,
~ ~xj ) = exp(λ ∗ |w~ ~ xj |2 ), λ > 0
sigmoid: f (w,~ ~xj ) = tanh(ρ(w~ ~ xj ) + c), for ρ > 0 and c < 0

Ensemble Classifiers

Ensemble Classifiers
Combine predictions of distinct classifiers to generate a
new predictive score
Ideally, results of higher precision than those yielded by
constituent classifiers
Two ensemble classification methods:
stacking
boosting

Stacking-based Ensemble

Stacking-based Classifiers
Stacking method: learn function that combines
predictions of individual classifiers

Stacking-based Classifiers
With each document-class pair [dj , cp ] in training set
associate predictions made by distinct classifiers
Instead of predicting class of document dj
predict the classifier that best predicts the class of dj , or
combine predictions of base classifiers to produce better results
Advantage: errors of a base classifier can be

counter-balanced by hits of others

Boosting-based Classifiers
Boosting: classifiers to be combined are generated by
several iterations of a same learning technique
Focus: missclassified training documents
At each interaction
each document in training set is given a weight
weights of incorrectly classified documents are increased at each
round
After n rounds
outputs of trained classifiers are combined in a weighted sum
weights are the error estimates of each classifier

Boosting-based Classifiers
Variation of AdaBoost algorithm (Yoav Freund et al)
AdaBoost
let T : Dt × C be the training set function;
let Nt be the training set size and M be the number of iterations;
initialize the weight wj of each document dj as wj = N1t ;
for k = 1 to M {
learn the classifier function Fk from the training set;
P PNt
estimate weighted error: errk = dj |dj misclassif ied wj / i=1 wj ;

compute a classifier weight: αk = 21 × log 1−errerrk
k
;
for all correctly classified examples ej : wj ← wj × e−αk ;
for all incorrectly classified examples ej : wj ← wj × eαk ;
normalize the weights wj so that they sum up to 1;
}

Feature Selection or
Dimensionality Reduction

Feature Selection
Large feature space
might render document classifiers impractical
Classic solution
select a subset of all features to represent the documents
called feature selection
reduces dimensionality of the documents representation
reduces overfitting

Term-Class Incidence Table
Feature selection
dependent on statistics on term occurrences inside docs and
classes
Let
Dt : subset composed of all training documents
Nt : number of documents in Dt
ti : number of documents from Dt that contain term ki
C = {c1 , c2 , . . . , cL }: set of all L classes
T : Dt × C → [0, 1]: a training set function

Term-class incidence table
Case Docs in cp Docs not in cp Total

Docs that contain ki ni,p ni − ni,p ni
Docs that do not contain ki np − ni,p Nt − ni − (np − ni,p ) Nt − ni
All docs np Nt − np Nt
ni,p : # docs that contain ki and are classified in cp

ni − ni,p : # docs that contain ki but are not in class cp
np : total number of training docs in class cp
np − ni,p : number of docs from cp that do not contain ki

Given term-class incidence table above, define
ni
Probability that ki ∈ dj : P (ki ) = Nt
Nt −ni
Probability that ki 6∈ dj : P (k i ) = Nt
np
Probability that dj ∈ cp : P (cp ) = Nt
Nt −np
Probability that dj 6∈ cp : P (cp ) = Nt
ni,p
Probability that ki ∈ dj and dj ∈ cp : P (ki , cp ) Nt
np −ni,p
Probability that ki 6∈ dj and dj ∈ cp : P (ki , cp ) = Nt
ni −ni,p
Probability that ki ∈ dj and dj 6∈ cp : P (ki , cp ) = Nt
Nt −ni −(np −ni,p )
Probability that ki 6∈ dj and dj 6∈ cp : P (ki , cp ) = Nt

Feature Selection by Doc Frequency
Let Kth be a threshold on term document frequencies
Feature Selection by Term Document Frequency
retain all terms ki for which ni ≥ Kth
discard all others
recompute doc representations to consider only terms retained
Even if simple, method allows reducing dimensionality

of space with basically no loss in effectiveness

Feature Selection by Tf-Idf Weights
wi,j : tf-idf weight associated with pair [ki , dj ]
Kth : threshold on tf-idf weights
Feature Selection by TF-IDF Weights
retain all terms ki for which wi,j ≥ Kth
discard all others
Experiments suggest that this feature selection allows

reducing dimensionality of space by a factor of 10 with
no loss in effectiveness

Feature Selection by Mutual Informati
Mutual information
relative entropy between distributions of two random variables
If variables are independent, mutual information is zero
knowledge of one of the variables does not allow inferring
anything about the other variable

Mutual Information
Mutual information across all classes
ni,p
P (ki , cp ) Nt
I(ki , cp ) = log = log ni np
P (ki )P (cp ) Nt × Nt
That is,
L
X
M I(ki , C) = P (cp ) I(ki , cp )
p=1
L ni,p
X np Nt
= log ni np
Nt Nt × Nt
p=1

Mutual Information
Alternative: maximum term information over all classes
Imax (ki , C) = maxL

p=1 I(ki , cp )
ni,p
Nt
= maxL
p=1 log ni np
Nt × Nt
Kth : threshold on entropy

Feature Selection by Entropy
retain all terms ki for which M I(ki , C) ≥ Kth
discard all others

Feature Selection: Information Gain
Mutual information uses probabilities associated with
the occurrence of terms in documents
Information Gain
complementary metric
considers probabilities associated with absence of terms in docs
balances the effects of term/document occurrences with the
effects of term/document absences

Information Gain
Information gain of term ki over set C of all classes
IG(ki , C) = H(C) − H(C|ki ) − H(C|¬ki )

H(C): entropy of set of classes C
H(C|ki ): conditional entropies of C in the presence of term ki
H(C|¬ki ): conditional entropies of C in the absence of term ki
IG(ki , C): amount of knowledge gained about C due to the fact
that ki is known

Information Gain
Recalling the expression for entropy, we can write
L
X
IG(ki , C) = − P (cp ) log P (cp )
p=1
 
L
X
− − P (ki , cp ) log P (cp |ki )
p=1
 
L
X
− − P (k i , cp ) log P (cp |k i )
p=1

Information Gain
Applying Bayes rule
L
X P (ki , cp )
IG(ki , C) = − P (cp ) log P (cp ) − P (ki , cp ) log −
p=1
P (ki )

P (ki , cp )
P (ki , cp ) log
P (k i )
Substituting previous probability definitions

L
X np np ni,p ni,p np − ni,p np − ni,p
IG(ki , C) = − log − log − log
p=1
Nt Nt Nt ni Nt Nt − ni

Information Gain
Kth : threshold on information gain
Feature Selection by Information Gain
retain all terms ki for which IG(ki , C) ≥ Kth
discard all others

Feature Selection using Chi Square
Statistical metric defined as
2
N t (P (k ,
i pc )P (¬k i , ¬c p ) − P (ki , ¬c p )P (¬k ,
i pc ))
χ2 (ki , cp ) =
P (ki ) P (¬ki ) P (cp ) P (¬cp )
quantifies lack of independence between ki and cp

Using probabilities previously defined
Nt (ni,p (Nt − ni − np + ni,p ) − (ni − ni,p ) (np − ni,p ))2
χ2 (ki , cp ) =
np (Nt − np ) ni (Nt − ni )
2
Nt (Nt ni,p − np ni )
=
np ni (Nt − np )(Nt − ni )

Chi Square
Compute either average or max chi square
L
X
χ2avg (ki ) = P (cp ) χ2 (ki , cp )
p=1
χ2max (ki ) = maxL

p=1 χ 2
(ki , cp )
Kth : threshold on chi square

Feature Selection by Chi Square
retain all terms ki for which χ2avg (ki ) ≥ Kth
discard all others

Evaluation Metrics

Evaluation Metrics
Evaluation
important for any text classification method
key step to validate a newly proposed classification method

Contingency Table
Let
D: collection of documents
Dt : subset composed of training documents
Nt : number of documents in Dt
C = {c1 , c2 , . . . , cL }: set of all L classes
Further let
T : Dt × C → [0, 1]: training set function
nt : number of docs from training set Dt in class cp
F : D × C → [0, 1]: text classifiier function
nf : number of docs from training set assigned to class cp by the
classifier

Contingency Table
Apply classifier to all documents in training set
Contingency table is given by
Case T (dj , cp ) = 1 T (dj , cp ) = 0 T otal

F(dj , cp ) = 1 nf,t nf − nf,t nf
F(dj , cp ) = 0 nt − nf,t Nt − nf − nt + nf,t Nt − nf
All docs nt Nt − nt Nt
nf,t : number of docs that both the training and classifier functions
assigned to class cp
nt − nf,t : number of training docs in class cp that were
miss-classified
The remaining quantities are calculated analogously

Accuracy and Error
Accuracy and error metrics, relative to a given class cp
nf,t + (Nt − nf − nt + nf,t )

Acc(cp ) =
Nt
(nf − nf,t ) + (nt − nf,t )
Err(cp ) =
Nt
Acc(cp ) + Err(cp ) = 1
These metrics are commonly used for evaluating

classifiers

Accuracy and Error
Accuracy and error have disadvantages
consider classification with only two categories cp and cr
assume that out of 1,000 docs, 20 are in class cp
a classifier that assumes all docs not in class cp
accuracy = 98%
error = 2%
which erroneously suggests a very good classifier

Accuracy and Error
Consider now a second classifier that correctly predicts
50% of the documents in cp
T (dj , cp ) = 1 T (dj , cp ) = 0
F(dj , cp ) = 1 10 0 10
F(dj , cp ) = 0 10 980 990
all docs 20 980 1,000
In this case, accuracy and error are given by

10 + 980
Acc(cp ) = = 99%
1, 000
10 + 0
Err(cp ) = = 1%
1, 000

Accuracy and Error
This classifier is much better than one that guesses that
all documents are not in class cp
However, its accuracy is just 1% better, it increased
from 98% to 99%
This suggests that the two classifiers are almost
equivalent, which is not the case.

Precision and Recall
Variants of precision and recall metrics in IR
Precision P and recall R relative to a class cp
nf,t nf,t
P (cp ) = R(cp ) =
nf nt
Precision is the fraction of all docs assigned to class cp by the
classifier that really belong to class cp
Recall is the fraction of all docs that belong to class cp that were
correctly assigned to class cp

Consider again the classifier illustrated below
T (dj , cp ) = 1 T (dj , cp ) = 0
F(dj , cp ) = 1 10 0 10
F(dj , cp ) = 0 10 980 990
all docs 20 980 1,000
Precision and recall figures are given by

10
P (cp ) = = 100%
10
10
R(cp ) = = 50%
20

Precision and recall
computed for every category in set C
great number of values
makes tasks of comparing and evaluating algorithms more
difficult
Often convenient to combine precision and recall into a
single quality measure
one of the most commonly used such metric: F-measure

F-measure
F-measure is defined as
(α2 + 1)P (cp )R(cp )

Fα (cp ) =
α2 P (cp ) + R(cp )
α: relative importance of precision and recall
when α = 0, only precision is considered
when α = ∞, only recall is considered
when α = 0.5, recall is half as important as precision
when α = 1, common metric called F1 -measure
2P (cp )R(cp )
F1 (cp ) =
P (cp ) + R(cp )

F-measure
Consider again the the classifier illustrated below
T (dj , cp ) = 1 T (dj , cp ) = 0
F(dj , cp ) = 1 10 0 10
F(dj , cp ) = 0 10 980 990
all docs 20 980 1,000
For this example, we write

2 ∗ 1 ∗ 0.5
F1 (cp ) = ∼ 67%
1 + 0.5

F1 Macro and Micro Averages
Also common to derive a unique F1 value
average of F1 across all individual categories
Two main average functions

Micro-average F 1, or micF1
Macro-average F1 , or macF1

Macro-average F1 across all categories
P|C|
p=1 F1 (cp )
macF1 =
|C|
Micro-average F1 across all categories
2P R
micF1 =
P +R
P
cp ∈C nf,t
P = P
cp ∈C nf
P
cp ∈C nf,t
R = P
cp ∈C nt

In micro-average F1
every single document given the same importance
In macro-average F1
every single category is given the same importance
captures the ability of the classifier to perform well for many
classes
Whenever distribution of classes is skewed
both average metrics should be considered

Cross-Validation
Cross-validation
standard method to guarantee statistical validation of results
build k different classifiers: Ψ1 , Ψ2 , . . . , Ψk
for this, divide training set Dt into k disjoint sets (folds) of sizes
Nt1 , Nt2 , . . . , Ntk
classifier Ψi
training, or tuning, done on Dt minus the ith fold
testing done on the ith fold

Cross-Validation
Each classifier evaluated independently using
precision-recall or F1 figures
Cross-validation done by computing average of the k
measures
Most commonly adopted value of k is 10
method is called ten-fold cross-validation

Standard Collections
Reuters-21578
most widely used reference collection
constituted of news articles from Reuters for the year 1987
collection classified under several categories related to
economics (e.g., acquisitions, earnings, etc)
contains 9,603 documents for training and 3,299 for testing, with
90 categories co-occuring in both training and test
class proportions range from 1,88% to 29,96% in the training set
and from 1,7% to 32,95% in the testing set

Reuters: Volume 1 (RCV1) and Volume 2 (RCV2)
RCV1
another collection of news stories released by Reuters
contains approximately 800,00 documents
documents organized in 103 topical categories
expected to substitute previous Reuters-21578 collection
RCV2
modified version of original collection, with some corrections

OHSUMED
another popular collection for text classification
subset of Medline, containing medical documents (title or title +
abstract)
23 classes corresponding to MesH diseases are used to index
the documents

20 NewsGroups
third most used collection
approximately 20,000 messages posted to Usenet newsgroups
partitioned (nearly) evenly across 20 different newsgroups
categories are the newsgroups themselves

Other collections
WebKB hypertext collection
ACM-DL
a subset of the ACM Digital Library
samples of Web Directories such as Yahoo and ODP

Organizing the Classes
Taxonomies

Taxonomies
Labels provide information on semantics of each class
Lack of organization of classes restricts comprehension
and reasoning
Hierarchical organization of classes
most appealing to humans
hierarchies allow reasoning with more generic concepts
also provide for specialization, which allows breaking up a larger
set of entities into subsets

Taxonomies
To organize classes hierarchically use
specialization
generalization
sibling relations
Classes organized hierarchically compose a taxonomy
relations among classes can be used to fine tune the classifier
taxonomies make more sense when built for a specific domain of
knowledge

Taxonomies
Geo-referenced taxonomy of hotels in Hawaii

Taxonomies
Taxonomies are built manually or semi-automatically
Process of building a taxonomy:

Taxonomies
Manual taxonomies tend to be of superior quality
better reflect the information needs of the users
Automatic construction of taxonomies
needs more research and development
Once a taxonomy has been built
documents can be classified according to its concepts
can be done manually or automatically
automatic classification is advanced enough to work well in
practice

Modern Information Retrieval
Chapter 9
Indexing and Searching
with Gonzalo Navarro
Introduction
Inverted Indexes
Signature Files
Suffix Trees and Suffix Arrays
Sequential Searching
Multi-dimensional Indexing
Indexing and Searching, Modern Information Retrieval, Addison Wesley, 2010 – p. 1
Introduction
Although efficiency might seem a secondary issue
compared to effectiveness, it can rarely be neglected
in the design of an IR system
Efficiency in IR systems: to process user queries with
minimal requirements of computational resources
As we move to larger-scale applications, efficiency
becomes more and more important
For example, in Web search engines that index terabytes of data
and serve hundreds or thousands of queries per second

Introduction
Index: a data structure built from the text to speed up
the searches
In the context of an IR system that uses an index, the
efficiency of the system can be measured by:
Indexing time: Time needed to build the index
Indexing space: Space used during the generation of the index
Index storage: Space required to store the index
Query latency: Time interval between the arrival of the query
and the generation of the answer
Query throughput: Average number of queries processed per
second

Introduction
When a text is updated, any index built on it must be
updated as well
Current indexing technology is not well prepared to
support very frequent changes to the text collection
Semi-static collections: collections which are updated
at reasonable regular intervals (say, daily)
Most real text collections, including the Web, are indeed
semi-static
For example, although the Web changes very fast, the crawls of a
search engine are relatively slow
For maintaining freshness, incremental indexing is used

Inverted Indexes

Basic Concepts
Inverted index: a word-oriented mechanism for
indexing a text collection to speed up the searching task
The inverted index structure is composed of two
elements: the vocabulary and the occurrences
The vocabulary is the set of all different words in the text
For each word in the vocabulary the index stores the
documents which contain that word (inverted index)

Basic Concepts
Term-document matrix: the simplest way to represent
the documents that contain each word of the vocabulary
Vocabulary ni d1 d2 d3 d4
to 2 4 2 - -
do 3 2 - 3 3
is 1 2 - - -
be 4 2 2 2 2
or 1 - 1 - -
To do is to be.
not 1 - 1 - - To be is to do. To be or not to be.
I 2 - 2 2 - I am what I am.
am 2 - 2 1 -
what 1 - 1 - -
d1
d2
think 1 - - 1 -
I think therefore I am.
therefore 1 - - 1 - Do be do be do. Do do do, da da da.
da 1 - - - 3 Let it be, let it be.
let 1 - - - 2
it 1 - - - 2
d3
d4

Basic Concepts
The main problem of this simple solution is that it
requires too much space
As this is a sparse matrix, the solution is to associate a
list of documents with each word
The set of all those lists is called the occurrences

Basic Concepts
Basic inverted index
Vocabulary ni Occurrences as inverted lists

to 2 [1,4],[2,2]
do 3 [1,2],[3,3],[4,3]
is 1 [1,2]
be 4 [1,2],[2,2],[3,2],[4,2]
or 1 [2,1]
To do is to be.
not 1 [2,1] To be is to do. To be or not to be.
I 2 [2,2],[3,2] I am what I am.
am 2 [2,2],[3,1]
what 1 [2,1]
d1
d2
think 1 [3,1]
therefore 1 [3,1] Do be do be do. Do do do, da da da.
da 1 [4,3] Let it be, let it be.
let 1 [4,2]
it 1 [4,2]
d3
d4

Inverted Indexes
Full Inverted Indexes

The basic index is not suitable for answering phrase or
proximity queries
Hence, we need to add the positions of each word in
each document to the index (full inverted index)
1 4 12 18 21 24 35 43 50 54 64 67 77 83
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Text
between 35
difference 24
practice 54 67
theory 4 43
Vocabulary Occurrences

In the case of multiple documents, we need to store one
occurrence list per term-document pair
Vocabulary ni Occurrences as full inverted lists
to 2 [1,4,[1,4,6,9]],[2,2,[1,5]]
do 3 [1,2,[2,10]],[3,3,[6,8,10]],[4,3,[1,2,3]]
is 1 [1,2,[3,8]]
be 4 [1,2,[5,7]],[2,2,[2,6]],[3,2,[7,9]],[4,2,[9,12]]
or 1 [2,1,[3]]
not 1 [2,1,[4]] To do is to be.
I 2 [2,2,[7,10]],[3,2,[1,4]] To be is to do. To be or not to be.
I am what I am.
am 2 [2,2,[8,11]],[3,1,[5]]
what 1 [2,1,[9]] d1
think 1 [3,1,[2]]
d2
therefore 1 [3,1,[3]] I think therefore I am.
Do be do be do. Do do do, da da da.
da 1 [4,3,[4,5,6]] Let it be, let it be.
let 1 [4,2,[7,10]]
it 1 [4,2,[8,11]]
d3
d4

The space required for the vocabulary is rather small
Heaps’ law: the vocabulary grows as O(nβ ), where
n is the collection size
β is a collection-dependent constant between 0.4 and 0.6
For instance, in the TREC-3 collection, the vocabulary

of 1 gigabyte of text occupies only 5 megabytes
This may be further reduced by stemming and other
normalization techniques

The occurrences demand much more space
The extra space will be O(n) and is around
40% of the text size if stopwords are omitted
80% when stopwords are indexed
Document-addressing indexes are smaller, because

only one occurrence per file must be recorded, for a
given word
Depending on the document (file) size,
document-addressing indexes typically require 20% to
40% of the text size

To reduce space requirements, a technique called
block addressing is used
The documents are divided into blocks, and the
occurrences point to the blocks where the word appears
Block 1 Block 2 Block 3 Block 4
This is a text. A text has many words. Words are made from letters.
Text
Vocabulary Occurrences
letters 4...
made 4...
many 2...
Inverted Index
text 1, 2...
words 3...

The Table below presents the projected space taken by
inverted indexes for texts of different sizes
Index Single document Small collection Medium collection

granularity (1 MB) (200 MB) (2 GB)
Addressing
words 45% 73% 36% 64% 35% 63%
Addressing
documents 19% 26% 18% 32% 26% 47%
Addressing
64K blocks 27% 41% 18% 32% 5% 9%
Addressing
256 blocks 18% 25% 1.7% 2.4% 0.5% 0.7%

The blocks can be of fixed size or they can be defined
using the division of the text collection into documents
The division into blocks of fixed size improves efficiency
at retrieval time
This is because larger blocks match queries more frequently and
are more expensive to traverse
This technique also profits from locality of reference

That is, the same word will be used many times in the same
context and all the references to that word will be collapsed in just
one reference

Single Word Queries
The simplest type of search is that for the occurrences
of a single word
The vocabulary search can be carried out using any
suitable data structure
Ex: hashing, tries, or B-trees
The first two provide O(m) search cost, where m is the

length of the query
We note that the vocabulary is in most cases sufficiently
small so as to stay in main memory
The occurrence lists, on the other hand, are usually
fetched from disk

Multiple Word Queries
If the query has more than one word, we have to
consider two cases:
conjunctive (AND operator) queries
disjunctive (OR operator) queries
Conjunctive queries imply to search for all the words

in the query, obtaining one inverted list for each word
Following, we have to intersect all the inverted lists to
obtain the documents that contain all these words
For disjunctive queries the lists must be merged
The first case is popular in the Web due to the size of
the document collection

List Intersection
The most time-demanding operation on inverted
indexes is the merging of the lists of occurrences
Thus, it is important to optimize it
Consider one pair of lists of sizes m and n respectively,

stored in consecutive memory, that needs to be
intersected
If m is much smaller than n, it is better to do m binary
searches in the larger list to do the intersection
If m and n are comparable, Baeza-Yates devised a
double binary search algorithm
It is O(log n) if the intersection is trivially empty
It requires less than m + n comparisons on average

List Intersection
When there are more than two lists, there are several
possible heuristics depending on the list sizes
If intersecting the two shortest lists gives a very small
answer, might be better to intersect that to the next
shortest list, and so on
The algorithms are more complicated if lists are stored
non-contiguously and/or compressed

Phrase and Proximity Queries
Context queries are more difficult to solve with inverted
indexes
The lists of all elements must be traversed to find
places where
all the words appear in sequence (for a phrase), or
appear close enough (for proximity)
these algorithms are similar to a list intersection algorithm
Another solution for phrase queries is based on

indexing two-word phrases and using similar algorithms
over pairs of words
however the index will be much larger as the number of word
pairs is not linear

More Complex Queries
Prefix and range queries are basically (larger)
disjunctive queries
In these queries there are usually several words that
match the pattern
Thus, we end up again with several inverted lists and we can use
the algorithms for list intersection

More Complex Queries
To search for regular expressions the data structures
built over the vocabulary are rarely useful
The solution is then to sequentially traverse the
vocabulary, to spot all the words that match the pattern
Such a sequential traversal is not prohibitively costly
because it is carried out only on the vocabulary

Boolean Queries
In boolean queries, a query syntax tree is naturally
defined AND
translation OR
syntax syntactic
Normally, for boolean queries, the search proceeds in

three phases:
the first phase determines which documents to match
the second determines the likelihood of relevance of the
documents matched
the final phase retrieves the exact positions of the matches to
allow highlighting them during browsing, if required
Boolean Queries
Once the leaves of the query syntax tree find the
classifying sets of documents, these sets are further
operated by the internal nodes of the tree
Under this scheme, it is possible to evaluate the syntax
tree in full or lazy form
In the full evaluation form, both operands are first completely
obtained and then the complete result is generated
In lazy evaluation, the partial results from operands are delivered
only when required, and then the final result is recursively
generated

Boolean Queries
Processing the internal nodes of the query syntax tree
In (a) full evaluation is used
In (b) we show lazy evaluation in more detail
AND AND 46
a)
146 OR 146 23467
246 237
b)
AND 4 AND 6
AND AND AND AND
1 OR 2 4 OR 2 4 OR 3 4 OR 4 6 OR 6 OR 7
4 3 4 3 4 7 6 7 7

Inverted Indexes
Searching

Ranking
How to find the top-k documents and return them to the
user when we have weight-sorted inverted lists?
If we have a single word query, the answer is trivial as
the list can be already sorted by the desired ranking
For other queries, we need to merge the lists

Ranking
Suppose that we are searching the disjunctive query
“to do” on the collection below
To do is to be.
To be is to do. To be or not to be.
I am what I am.
d1
d2
Do be do be do. Do do do, da da da.
Let it be, let it be.
d3
d4
As our collection is very small, let us assume that we
are interested in the top-2 ranked documents
We can use the following heuristic:
we process terms in idf order (shorter lists first), and
each term is processed in tf order (simple ranking order)

Ranking
Ranking-in-the-vector-model( query terms t )
01 Create P as C-candidate similarities initialized to (P d , Pw ) = (0, 0)
02 Sort the query terms t by decreasing weight
03 c←1
04 for each sorted term t in the query do
05 Compute the value of the threshold t add
06 Retrieve the inverted list for t, L t
07 for each document d in L t do This is a variant of
08 if wd,t < tadd then break Persin’s algorithm
09 psim ← wd,t × wq,t /Wd
10 if d ∈ Pd (i) then We use a priority queue P of
11 Pw (i) ← Pw (i) + psim C document candidates
11 elif psim > minj (Pw (j)) then
where we will compute partial
11 n ← minj (Pw (j))
12 elif c ≤ C then
similarities
13 n←c
14 c ←c+1
15 if n ≤ C then P (n) ← (d, psim)
16 return the top-k documents according to P w

Internal Algorithms
Building an index in internal memory is a relatively
simple and low-cost task
A dynamic data structure to hold the vocabulary (B-tree,
hash table, etc.) is created empty
Then, the text is scanned and each consecutive word is
searched for in the vocabulary
If it is a new word, it is inserted in the vocabulary before
proceeding

Internal Algorithms
A large array is allocated where the identifier of each
consecutive text word is stored
A full-text inverted index for a sample text with the
incremental algorithm:
1 6 9 11 17 19 24 28 33 40 46 50 55 60
Text
letters: 60
"l"
"d" made: 50
"m" "a"
many: 28 Vocabulary trie

"t" "n"
text: 11, 19
"w"
words: 33, 40

Internal Algorithms
A full-text inverted index for a sample text with a sorting
algorithm:
1 4 12 18 21 24 35 43 50 54 64 67 77 83
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Text
collect identifiers
1 between
4:4 2:24 1:35 4:43 3:54 3:67
2 difference
3 practice sort
4 theory
1:35 2:24 3:54 3:67 4:4 4:43
Vocabulary
identify headers
Occurrences 35 24 54 67 4 43

Internal Algorithms
An alternative to avoid this sorting is to separate the
lists from the beginning
In this case, each vocabulary word will hold a pointer to its own
array (list) of occurrences, initially empty
A non trivial issue is how the memory for the many lists
of occurrences should be allocated
A classical list in which each element is allocated individually
wastes too much space
Instead, a scheme where a list of blocks is allocated, each block
holding several entries, is preferable

Internal Algorithms
Once the process is completed, the vocabulary and the
lists of occurrences are written on two distinct disk files
The vocabulary contains, for each word, a pointer to the
position of the inverted list of the word
This allows the vocabulary to be kept in main memory
at search time in most cases

External Algorithms
All the previous algorithms can be extended by using
them until the main memory is exhausted
At this point, the partial index Ii obtained up to now is
written to disk and erased from main memory
These indexes are then merged in a hierarchical
fashion

External Algorithms
Merging the partial indexes in a binary fashion
Rectangles represent partial indexes, while rounded rectangles
represent merging operations
Level 4
Iï1..8 (final index)
Iï1..4 Iï5..8 Level 3
3 6
Iï1..2 Iï3..4 Iï5..6 Iï7..8 Level 2
1 2 4 5
Level 1
Iï1 Iï2 Iï3 Iï4 Iï5 Iï6 Iï7 Iï8 (initial dumps

External Algorithms
In general, maintaining an inverted index can be done
in three different ways:
Rebuild
If the text is not that large, rebuilding the index is the simplest
solution
Incremental updates
We can amortize the cost of updates while we search
That is, we only modify an inverted list when needed
Intermittent merge
New documents are indexed and the resultant partial index is
merged with the large index
This in general is the best solution

Inverted Indexes
Compressed Inverted Indexes

It is possible to combine index compression and text
compression without any complication
In fact, in all the construction algorithms mentioned, compression
can be added as a final step
In a full-text inverted index, the lists of text positions or

file identifiers are in ascending order
Therefore, they can be represented as sequences of
gaps between consecutive numbers
Notice that these gaps are small for frequent words and large for
infrequent words
Thus, compression can be obtained by encoding small values
with shorter codes

A coding scheme for this case is the unary code
In this method, each integer x > 0 is coded as (x − 1) 1-bits
followed by a 0-bit
A better scheme is the Elias-γ code, which represents a

number x > 0 by a concatenation of two parts:
1. a unary code for 1 + "log2 x#
2. a code of "log2 x# bits that represents the number x − 2!log2 x" in
binary
Another coding scheme is the Elias-δ code

Elias-δ concatenates parts (1) and (2) as above, yet part
(1) is not represented in unary but using Elias-γ instead

Example codes for integers
Gap x Unary Elias-γ Elias-δ Golomb

(b = 3)
1 0 0 0 00
2 10 100 1000 010
3 110 101 1001 011
4 1110 11000 10100 100
5 11110 11001 10101 1010
6 111110 11010 10110 1011
7 1111110 11011 10111 1100
8 11111110 1110000 11000000 11010
9 111111110 1110001 11000001 11011
10 1111111110 1110010 11000010 11100
Note: Golomb codes will be explainedIndexing

later and Searching, Modern Information Retrieval, Addison Wesley, 2010 – p. 43
In general,
Elias-γ for an arbitrary integer x > 0 requires 1 + 2"log2 x# bits
Elias-δ requires 1 + 2"log2 log2 2x# + "log2 x# bits
For small values of x Elias-γ codes are shorter than

Elias-δ codes, and the situation is reversed as x grows
Thus the choice depends on which values we expect to
encode

Golomb presented another coding method that can be
parametrized to fit smaller or larger gaps
For some parameter b, let q and r be the quotient and
remainder, respectively, of dividing x − 1 by b
I.e., q = "(x − 1)/b# and r = (x − 1) − q · b
Then x is coded by concatenating

the unary representation of q + 1
the binary representation of r, using either "log2 b# or $log2 b% bits

If r < 2!log2 b"−1 then r uses "log2 b# bits, and the
representation always starts with a 0-bit
Otherwise it uses $log2 b% bits where the first bit is 1 and
the remaining bits encode the value r − 2!log2 b"−1 in
"log2 b# binary digits
For example,
For b = 3 there are three possible remainders, and those are
coded as 0, 10, and 11, for r = 0, r = 1, and r = 2, respectively
For b = 5 there are five possible remainders r, 0 through 4, and
these are assigned the codes 00, 01, 100, 101, and 110

To encode the lists of occurrences using Golomb
codes, we must define the parameter b for each list
Golomb codes usually give better compression than
either Elias-γ or Elias-δ
However they need two passes to be generated as well as
information on terms statistics over the whole document collection
For example, in the TREC-3 collection, the average
number of bits per list entry for each method is
Golomb = 5.73
Elias-δ = 6.19
Elias-γ = 6.43
This represents a five-fold reduction in space compared

to a plain inverted index representation
Let us now consider inverted indexes for ranked search
In this case the documents are sorted by decreasing frequency of
the term or other similar type of weight
Documents that share the same frequency can be

sorted in increasing order of identifiers
This will permit the use of gap encoding to compress
most of each list

Inverted Indexes
Structural Queries

Structural Queries
Let us assume that the structure is marked in the text
using tags
The idea is to make the index take the tags as if they
were words
After this process, the inverted index contains all the
information to answer structural queries

Structural Queries
Consider the query:
select structural elements of type A that contain a structure of
type B
The query can be translated into finding <A> followed

by <B> without </A> in between
The positions of those tags are obtained with the
full-text index
Many queries can be translated into a search for tags
plus validation of the sequence of occurrences
In many cases this technique is efficient and its
integration into an existing text database is simpler

Signature Files

Signature Files
Signature files are word-oriented index structures
based on hashing
They pose a low overhead, at the cost of forcing a
sequential search over the index
Since their search complexity is linear, it is suitable only
for not very large texts
Nevertheless, inverted indexes outperform signature
files for most applications

Structure
A signature divides the text in blocks of b words each,
and maps words to bit masks of B bits
This mask is obtained by bit-wise ORing the signatures
of all the words in the text block
Block 1 Block 2 Block 3 Block 4
Text
000101 110101 100100 101101 Text signature
h(text) = 000101
h(many) = 110000
h(words) = 100100 Signature function
h(made) = 001100
h(letters) = 100001

Structure
If a word is present in a text block, then its signature is
also set in the bit mask of the text block
Hence, if a query signature is not in the mask of the text
block, then the word is not present in the text block
However, it is possible that all the corresponding bits
are set even though the word is not there
This is called a false drop
A delicate part of the design of a signature file is:

to ensure the probability of a false drop is low, and
to keep the signature file as short as possible

Structure
The hash function is forced to deliver bit masks which
have at least # bits set
A good model assumes that # bits are randomly set in
the mask (with possible repetition)

Inverted Indexes
Searching

Searching
Searching a single word is made by comparing its bit
mask W with the bit masks Bi of all the text blocks
Whenever (W & Bi = W ), where & is the bit-wise AND,
the text block may contain the word
Hence, an online traversal must be performed to verify if
the word is actually there
This traversal cannot be avoided as in inverted indexes
(except if the risk of a false match is accepted)

Searching
This scheme is more efficient to search phrases and
reasonable proximity queries
This is because all the words must be present in a block in order
for that block to hold the phrase or the proximity query
Hence, the bit-wise OR of all the query masks is

searched, so that all their bits must be present
This reduces the probability of false drops
Some care has to be exercised at block boundaries, to

avoid missing a phrase which crosses a block limit
To search phrases of j words or proximities of up to j
words, consecutive blocks must overlap in j − 1 words
This is the only indexing scheme which improves in
phrase searching
Inverted Indexes
Construction

Construction
The construction of a signature file is rather easy:
The text is simply cut in blocks, and for each block an entry of the
signature file is generated
Adding text is also easy, since it is only necessary to

keep adding records to the signature file
Text deletion is carried out by deleting the appropriate
bit masks

Compression
There are many alternative ways to compress signature
files
All of them are based on the fact that only a few bits are
set in the whole file
Compression ratios near 70% are reported


Inverted indexes are by far the preferred choice to
implement IR systems
However, they work if the vocabulary is not too large,
otherwise their efficiency would drastically drop
This condition holds in many languages (particularly
Western languages), but not in all
For example, Finnish and German are languages that
concatenate short particles to form long words
Usually, there is no point in querying for those long

words, but by the particles that form them

Suffix trees and suffix arrays enable indexed searching
for any text substring matching a query string
These indexes regard the text as one long string, and
each position in the text is considered as a text suffix
For example, if the text is missing mississippi, the
suffixes are
missing mississippi
issing mississippi
ssing mississippi
..
ppi
pi
i

Structure

Structure
A trie over a set of strings P = {P1 , . . . , Pr } is a
tree-shaped DFA that recognizes P1 | . . . | Pr
Hence looking for a string in P is equivalent to
determining whether the DFA recognizes the string
A suffix trie is, in essence, a trie data structure built
over all the suffixes of a text T = t1 t2 . . . tn , tn , ‘$’
The pointers to the suffixes ti . . . tn are stored at the
final states

Structure
To reduce the number of nodes in such a trie, the suffix
trie removes all unary paths that finish at a leaf.
The suffix trie for the text missing mississippi is
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
m i s s i n g m i s s i s s i p p i $
$ g i m n p s
20 8 7 6
i p
18 17 i s
$ n p s i
19 5 16
s s n p s i
4 15 12
s n p s
i
3 14 11
n p s i
2 13 10
n s
1 9

Structure
Suffix tree: to further reduce the space requirement, all
the remaining unary paths can be compressed
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
$ g i m n p s
20 8 7 6
i p
18 17 i s
$ n p s i
19 5 16
s s n p s i
4 15 12
s n p s
i
3 14 11
n p s i
2 13 10
n s
1 9
$ g i missi n p s
20 8 7 6
n s i p
1 9 i si
$ n p ssi 18 17
19 5 16
n p s n p s n p s
2 13 10 4 15 12 3 14 11

Structure
The problem with suffix trees is their space
Depending on the implementation, a suffix tree takes 10
to 20 times the space of the text itself
For example, the suffix tree of a text of 1 gigabyte would need at
least 10 gigabytes of space
In addition, suffix trees do not perform well in secondary

memory

Structure
Suffix arrays provide essentially the same functionality
of suffix trees with much lower space requirements
A suffix array of T is defined as an array pointing to all
the suffixes of T , where suffixes have been
lexicographically sorted (that is, the leaves of the suffix
trie from left to right)
The suffix array for the text missing mississippi:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
20 8 7 19 5 16 2 13 10 1 9 6 18 17 4 15 12 3 14 11

Structure
A suffix array takes typically 4 times the text size, which
makes it appealing for longer texts
In exchange, suffix arrays are slightly slower than suffix
trees
In some papers suffix trees and arrays are called PAT
trees and arrays

Searching for Simple Strings

The main property that permits finding substrings equal
to a given pattern string P = p1 p2 . . . pm is as follows:
Every text substring is a prefix of a text suffix
The main idea is then to descend in the trie by following

the characters of P
There are three possible outcomes:
There might be no path in the trie spelling out P : then P does not
occur in T
We find P before reaching a leaf: then P appears in all the
positions stored in the leaves under that path
Maybe we arrive at a leaf before reading P completely: in this
case we have to keep comparing in the text pointed by the leaf to
know if P is in the text or not

If the search is carried out on a suffix tree instead, then
the edges are labeled by strings
Yet, all the strings labeling edges that depart from a
given node differ in their first character
Therefore, at each node, there is at most one edge to
follow

Pseudocode for a suffix tree search
Suffix-Tree-Search (S, P = p1 p2 . . . pm )
(1) i ← 1
(2) while true do
(3) if S is a leaf pointing to j then
(4) if pi . . . pm = tj+i−1 . . . tj+m−1
(5) then return S
(6) else return null
p!1 ...p!s
(7) if there is an edge S −→ S # ∧ p#1 = pi then
(8) j←0
(9) while j < s ∧ i + j ≤ m ∧ p#j+1 = pi+j do j ← j + 1
(10) i←i+j
(11) if i > m then return S #
(12) if j < s then return null
(13) S ← S#
(14) else return null

Searching in a suffix array is slightly different
We perform a binary search with indirect comparisons
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
20 8 7 19 5 16 2 13 10 1 9 6 18 17 4 15 12 3 14 11
Note that each step in this binary search requires

comparing P against a text suffix

Searching for Complex Patterns

Searching for a complex pattern using a suffix trie it is
not a trivial task
Assume for example we wish to search for a certain regular
expression
We build the corresponding non-deterministic finite automaton
without adding the initial self-loop
We will detect all the text suffixes that start with a string matching
the regular expression

For this sake, the algorithm begins at the trie root
For each child of a node c, the automaton is fed with c
and the algorithm recursively enters the subtree
When the recursion returns from the subtree, the original
automaton state before feeding it with c is restored
The process is repeated for each children of c

The search stops in three possible forms:
The automaton runs out of active states
The automaton arrives at a final state
We arrive at a trie leaf and we keep searching in the suffix
referenced there

Indexed approximate string matching with tolerance k is
also possible using the same idea
Approximate searching on a trie cannot exceed depth
m + k , and thus the time is independent on the text size
for short enough patterns
For longer patterns the exponential dependence on m becomes
apparent in the search time
Suffix trees are able to perform other complex searches

that we have not considered
Some examples are:
Find the longest substring in the text that appears more than once
Find the most common substring of a fixed length

Construction

Construction
A simple way to generate a suffix array is to
lexicographically sort all the pointed suffixes
To compare two suffix array entries in this sorting, the
corresponding text positions must be accessed
There are several much stronger sorting algorithms for
suffix arrays
The main idea: if we know that ti+1 . . . tn < tj+1 . . . tn and
ti = tj , then we directly infer that ti . . . tn < tj . . . tn
Different algorithms build on this idea in different ways

Construction for Large Texts

When the data is not in main memory, algorithms for
secondary memory construction are required
We present an algorithm that splits the text into blocks
that can be sorted in main memory
For each block, it builds the suffix array of the block in
main memory, and merges it with the rest of the suffix
array already built for the preceding text:
(1) build the suffix array for block 1
(3) merge the suffix array for block 2 with that of block 1
(5) merge the suffix array for block 3 with that of block 1+2
(6) .... etc

How to merge a large suffix array LA for blocks
1, 2, . . . , i − 1 with the small suffix array SA for block i?
The solution is to determine how many elements of LA
are to be placed between the elements in SA
The information is stored in a counter array C: C[j] tells how
many suffixes of LA lie between SA[j] and SA[j + 1]
Once C is computed, LA and SA are easily merged:

(1) append the first C[0] elements of LA
(2) append SA[1]
(3) append the next C[1] elements of LA
(4) append SA[2]
(5) append the next C[2] elements of LA
(6) append SA[3]
(7) .... etc

The remaining point is how to compute the counter
array C
This is done without accessing LA: the text corresponding to
LA is sequentially read into main memory
Each suffix of that text is searched for in SA (in main

memory)
Once we determine that the text suffix lies between
SA[j] and SA[j + 1], we increment C[j]
Notice that this same algorithm can be used for index
maintenance

A step of the suffix array construction for large texts:
(a) the local suffix array SA is built
(b) the counters C are computed
(c) suffix arrays SA and LA are merged
a) small text
b) small text
SA
SA small suffix array long text
small suffix array
C
counters
small text LA
c) SA long suffix array
small suffix array
C
counters final suffix array

Compressed Suffix Arrays

An important problem of suffix arrays is their high space
requirement
Consider again the suffix array of the Figure below, and
call it A[1, n]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
20 8 7 19 5 16 2 13 10 1 9 6 18 17 4 15 12 3 14 11
The values at A[15..17] are 4, 15, 12

The same sequence is found, displaced by one value,
at A[18..20], and further displaced at A[7..9]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
20 8 7 19 5 16 2 13 10 1 9 6 18 17 4 15 12 3 14 11
A compressor can realize that every time it has seen

si, the next character it will see is s and then i
This is related to k-th order compression
By exploiting these regularities, the suffix array of a

compressible text can also be compressed
Manipulating a suffix array in compressed form is
indeed slower than using the uncompressed suffix array
There is not much development on using suffix array
indexes (compressed or not) on disk
Using Function Ψ
One way to exhibit the suffix array regularities is by
means of a function called Ψ and defined so that
A[Ψ(i)] = A[i] + 1,
except when A[i] = n, in which case A[Ψ(i)] = 1

That is, Ψ(i) tells where in A is the value that follows the
current one

Using Function Ψ
Function Ψ computed for the example suffix array, and
diff(i) = Ψ(i) − Ψ(i − 1)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
T m i s s i n g m i s s i s s i p p i $
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
A 20 8 7 19 5 16 2 13 10 1 9 6 18 17 4 15 12 3 14 11
^ 10 11 2 1 12 14 18 19 20 7 9 3 4 13 5 6 8 15 16 17
diff 10 1 ï9 ï1 11 2 4 1 1 ï 13 2 ï6 1 9 ï8 1 2 7 1 1
$ g i m n p s
We indicate the areas of the arrays where the suffixes

start with the same character

Using Function Ψ
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
T m i s s i n g m i s s i s s i p p i $
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
A 20 8 7 19 5 16 2 13 10 1 9 6 18 17 4 15 12 3 14 11
^ 10 11 2 1 12 14 18 19 20 7 9 3 4 13 5 6 8 15 16 17
diff 10 1 ï9 ï1 11 2 4 1 1 ï 13 2 ï6 1 9 ï8 1 2 7 1 1
$ g i m n p s
Several properties of Ψ are apparent from the figure

and not difficult to prove:
First, Ψ is increasing within the areas where the suffixes start with
the same character
Second, in the areas where the regularities we pointed out before
arise, it holds Ψ(i) − Ψ(i − 1) = 1

Using Function Ψ
What is most interesting is that the characters of T can
be obtained without accessing T
Therefore, T can be actually deleted and any substring
of it can be obtained just from Ψ
However, this is rarely sufficient, as one usually wants
to know the text positions where the pattern P occurs,
not the interval in A
Yet, we do not have A in order to display the positions of
the occurrences, A[i] for sp ≤ i ≤ ep

Using Function Ψ
To be able to locate those occurrences in T , we sample
A at regular intervals of T :
Every s-th character in T , record the suffix array position pointing
to that text position
That is, for each text position of the form 1 + j · s, let

A[i] = 1 + j · s
Then we store the pair (i, A[i]) in a dictionary
searchable by its first component
Finally, we should also be able to display any text
substring, as we plan to discard T
Note that we already know how to obtain the characters
of T starting at text position A[i], given i

The Burrows-Wheeler Transform
A radically different method for compressing is by
means of the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT)
The BWT of T can be obtained by just concatenating
the characters that precede each suffix in A
That is, tA[i]−1 or tn if A[i] = 1
For example, the BWT of T = missing

mississippi$ is T bwt = ignpssmsm$ ipisssiii
It turns out that the BWT tends to group equal
characters into runs
Further, there are large zones where few different
characters appear


In general the sequential search problem is:
Given a text T = t1 t2 . . . tn and a pattern denoting a set of strings
P, find all the occurrences of the strings of P in T
Exact string matching: the simplest case, where the

pattern denotes just a single string P = p1 p2 . . . pm
This problem subsumes many of the basic queries,
such as word, prefix, suffix, and substring search
We assume that the strings are sequences of
characters drawn from an alphabet Σ of size σ

Simple Strings
Simple Strings: Brute Force
The brute force algorithm:
Try out all the possible pattern positions in the text and checks
them one by one
More precisely, the algorithm slides a window of length

m across the text, ti+1 ti+2 . . . ti+m for 0 ≤ i ≤ n − m
Each window denotes a potential pattern occurrence
that must be verified
Once verified, the algorithm slides the window to the
next position
Simple Strings: Brute Force
A sample text and pattern searched for using brute
force
The first text window is T abraca bracadabra T

abracabraca
After verifying that it P abracadabra P
does not match P , the
window is shifted by abracadabra
one position
abracadabra
abracadabra
Simple Strings: Horspool
Horspool’s algorithm is in the fortunate position of
being very simple to understand and program
It is the fastest algorithm in many situations, especially
when searching natural language texts
Horspool’s algorithm uses the previous idea to shift the
window in a smarter way
A table d indexed by the characters of the alphabet is
precomputed:
d[c] tells how many positions can the window be shifted if the final
character of the window is c
In other words, d[c] is the distance from the end of the
pattern to the last occurrence of c in P , excluding the
occurrence of pm
The Figure repeats the previous example, now also
applying Horspool’s shift
T abraca bracadabra T abraca bracadabra
P abracadabra P abracadabra
abracadabra abracadabra
abracadabra
abracadabra
Pseudocode for Horspool’s string matching algorithm
Horspool (T = t1 t2 . . . tn , P = p1 p2 . . . pm )
(1) for c ∈ Σ do d[c] ← m
(2) for j ← 1 . . . m − 1 do d[pj ] ← m − j
(3) i←0
(4) while i ≤ n − m do
(5) j←1
(6) while j ≤ m ∧ ti+j = pj do j ← j + 1
(7) if j > m then report an occurrence at text position i + 1
(8) i ← i + d[ti+m ]
Small alphabets and long patterns
When searching for long patterns over small alphabets
Horspool’s algorithm does not perform well
Imagine a computational biology application where strings of 300
nucleotides over the four-letter alphabet {A, C, G, T} are sought
This problem can be alleviated by considering

consecutive pairs of characters to shift the window
On other words, we can align the pattern with the last pair of
window characters, ti+m−1 ti+m
In the previous example, we would shift by 42 = 16

positions on average
In general we can shift using q characters at the end of
the window: which is the best value for q ?
We cannot shift by more than m, and thus σ q ≤ m seems to be a
natural limit
If we set q = logσ m, the average search time will be
O(n logσ (m)/m)
Actually, this average complexity is optimal, and the

choice for q we derived is close to correct
It can be analytically shown that, by choosing
q = 2 logσ m, the average search time achieves the
optimal O(n logσ (m)/m)
This technique is used in the agrep software
A hash function is chosen to map q -grams (strings of
length q ) onto an integer range
Then the distance from each q -gram of P to the end of
P is recorded in the hash table
For the q -grams that do not exist in P , distance
m − q + 1 is used
Pseudocode for the agrep’s algorithm to match long
patterns over small alphabets (simplified)
Agrep (T = t1 t2 . . . tn , P = p1 p2 . . . pm , q, h( ), N )
(1) for i ∈ [1, N ] do d[i] ← m − q + 1
(2) for j ← 0 . . . m − q do d[h(pj+1 pj+2 . . . pj+q )] ← m − q − j
(3) i←0
(5) s ← d[h(ti+m−q+1 ti+m−q+2 . . . ti+m )]
(6) if s > 0 then i ← i + s
(7) else
(8) j←1
(9) while j ≤ m ∧ ti+j = pj do j ← j + 1
(10) if j > m then report an occurrence at text position i + 1
(11) i←i+1
Automata and Bit-Parallelism
Horspool’s algorithm, as well as most classical
algorithms, does not adapt well to complex patterns
We now show how automata and bit-parallelism
permit handling many complex patterns
Automata
Figure below shows, on top, a NFA to search for the
pattern P = abracadabra
The initial self-loop matches any character
Each table column corresponds to an edge of the automaton
a b r a c a d a b r a
B[a] = 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0
B[b] = 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1
B[r] = 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1
B[c] = 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1
B[d] = 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1
B[*] = 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Automata
It can be seen that the NFA in the previous Figure
accepts any string that finishes with P =
‘abracadabra’
The initial state is always active because of the self-loop
that can be traversed by any character
Note that several states can be simultaneously active
For example, after reading ‘abra’, NFA states 0, 1, and 4 will be
active
Bit-parallelism and Shift-And
Bit-parallelism takes advantage of the intrinsic
parallelism of bit operations
Bit masks are read right to left, so that the first bit of
bm . . . b1 is b1
Bit masks are handled with operations like:
| to denote the bit-wise or
& to denote the bit-wise and, and
! to denote the bit-wise xor
Unary operation ‘∼’ complements all the bits
In addition:
mask << i means shifting all the bits in mask by i positions to
the left, entering zero bits from the right
mask >> i is analogous
Finally, it is possible to operate bit masks as numbers,

for example adding or subtracting them
The simplest bit-parallel algorithm permits matching
single strings, and it is called Shift-And
The algorithm builds a table B which, for each
character, stores a bit mask bm . . . b1
The mask in B[c] has the i-th bit set if and only if pi = c
The state of the search is kept in a machine word

D = dm . . . d1 , where di is set if the state i is active
Therefore, a match is reported whenever dm = 1
Note that state number zero is not represented in D

because it is always active and then can be left implicit
Pseudocode for the Shift-And algorithm
Shift-And (T = t1 t2 . . . tn , P = p1 p2 . . . pm )
(1) for c ∈ Σ do B[c] ← 0

(2) for j ← 1 . . . m do B[pj ] ← B[pj ] | (1 << (j − 1))
(3) D←0
(4) for i ← 1 . . . n do
(5) D ← ((D << 1) | 1) & B[ti ]
(6) if D & (1 << (m − 1)) += 0
(7) then report an occurrence at text position i − m + 1
There must be sufficient bits in the computer word to

store one bit per pattern position
For longer patterns, in practice we can search for p1 p2 . . . pw , and
directly check the occurrences of this prefix for the complete P
Extending Shift-And
Shift-And can deal with much more complex patterns
than Horspool
The simplest case is that of classes of characters:
This is the case, for example, when one wishes to search in
case-insensitive fashion, or one wishes to look for a whole word
Let us now consider a more complicated pattern

Imagine that we search for neighbour, but we wish the u to be
optional (accepting both English and American style)
The Figure below shows an NFA that does the task

using an ε-transition
n e i g h b o u r
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
¡
Extending Shift-And
Another feature in complex patterns is the use of wild
cards, or more generally repeatable characters
Those are pattern positions that can appear once or more times,
consecutively, in the text
For example, we might want to catch all the transfer

records in a banking log
Extending Shift-And
As another example, we might look for well known,
yet there might be a hyphen or one or more spaces
For instance ‘well known’, ‘well known’, ‘well-known’,
‘well - known’, ‘well \n known’, and so on
sep
w e l l sep k n o w n
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Extending Shift-And
Figure below shows pseudocode for a Shift-And
extension that handles all these cases
Shift-And-Extended (T = t1 t2 . . . tn , m, B[ ], A, S)
(1) I ← (A >> 1) & (A ! (A >> 1))

(2) F ← A & (A ! (A >> 1))
(3) D←0
(4) for i ← 1 . . . n do
(5) D ← (((D << 1) | 1) | (D & S)) & B[ti ]
(6) Df ← D | F
(7) D ← D | (A & ((∼ (Df − I)) ! Df ))
(8) if D & (1 << (m − 1)) += 0
(9) then report an occurrence at text position i − m + 1
Faster Bit-Parallel Algorithms
There exist some algorithms that can handle complex
patterns and still skip text characters (like Horspool)
For instance, Suffix Automata and Interlaced Shift-And algorithms
Those algorithms run progressively slower as the

pattern gets more complex
Suffix Automata
The suffix automaton of a pattern P is an automaton
that recognizes all the suffixes of P
Below we present a non-deterministic suffix automaton
for P = ‘abracadabra’
¡
I
a b r a c a d a b r a
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Suffix Automata
To search for pattern P , the suffix automaton of P rev
(the reversed pattern) is built
The algorithm scans the text window backwards and
feeds the characters into the suffix automaton of P rev
If the automaton runs out of active states after scanning
ti+m ti+m−1 . . . ti+j , this means that ti+j ti+j+1 . . . ti+m is
not a substring of P
Thus, no occurrence of P can contain this substring,
and the window can be safely shifted past ti+j
If, instead, we reach the beginning of the window and
the automaton still has active states, this means that
the window is equal to the pattern
Suffix Automata
The need to implement the suffix automaton and make
it deterministic makes the algorithm more complex
An attractive variant, called BNDM, implements the
suffix automaton using bit-parallelism
It achieves improved performance when the pattern is
not very long
say, at most twice the number of bits in the computer word
Suffix Automata
Pseudocode for BNDM algorithm:
BNDM (T = t1 t2 . . . tn , P = p1 p2 . . . pm )
(1) for c ∈ Σ do B[c] ← 0

(2) for j ← 1 . . . m do B[pj ] ← B[pj ] | (1 << (m − j))
(3) i←0
(5) j ←m−1
(6) D ← B[ti+m ]
(7) while j > 0 ∧ D += 0 do
(8) D ← (D << 1) & B[ti+j ]
(9) j ←j−1
(10) if D += 0 then report an occurrence at text position i + 1
(11) i←i+j+1
Interlaced Shift-And
Another idea to achieve optimal average search time is
to read one text character out of q
To fix ideas, assume P = neighborhood and q = 3
If we read one text position out of 3, and P occurs at
some text window ti+1 ti+2 . . . ti+m then we will read
either ‘ngoo’, ‘ehro’, or ‘ibhd’ at the window
Therefore, it is sufficient to search simultaneously for
the three subsequences of P
Now the initial state can activate the first q positions of
P , and the bit-parallel shifts are by q positions
A non-deterministic suffix automaton for interlaced
searching of P = ‘neighborhood’ with q = 3 is:
n
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
e
i g h b o r h o o d
Pseudocode for Interlaced Shift-And algorithm with
sampling step q (simplified):
Interlaced-Shift-And (T = t1 t2 . . . tn , P = p1 p2 . . . pm , q)
(1) for c ∈ Σ do B[c] ← 0

(2) for j ← 1 . . . m do B[pj ] ← B[pj ] | (1 << (j − 1))
(3) S ← (1 << q) − 1
(4) D←0
(5) for i ← 1 . . . "n/q# do
(6) D ← ((D << q) | S) & B[tq·i ]
(7) if D & (S << ("m/q# · q − q)) += 0
(8) then run Shift-And over tq·i−m+1 . . . tq·i+q−1
Regular Expressions
The first part in processing a regular expression is to
build an NFA from it
There are different NFA construction methods
We present the more traditional Thompson’s technique

as it is simpler to explain
Regular Expressions
Recursive Thompson’s construction of an NFA from a
regular expression
¡ a
Th ( ¡ ) = Th ( a ) =
Th ( E . E’) = Th ( E ) Th ( E’)
Th ( E ) ¡
¡
Th ( E | E’) =
¡
¡
Th ( E’)
¡ ¡
Th ( E * ) = Th ( E )
Regular Expressions
Once the NFA is built we add a self-loop (traversable by
any character) at the initial state
Another alternative is to make the NFA deterministic,
converting it into a DFA
However the number of states can grow non linearly,
even exponentially in the worst case
Multiple Patterns
Several of the algorithms for single string matching can
be extended to handle multiple strings
P = {P1 , P2 , . . . , Pr }
For example, we can extend Horspool so that d[c] is the minimum
over the di [c] values of the individual patterns Pi
To compute each di we must truncate Pi to the length of

the shortest pattern in P , and that length will be m
Other variants that perform well are extensions of
BNDM
Yet, bit-parallel algorithms are not useful for this case
Approximate Searching
A simple string matching problem where not only a
string P must be reported, but also text positions where
P occurs with at most k ‘errors’
Different definitions of what is an error can be adopted
The simplest definition is the Hamming distance that allows just
substitutions of characters
A very popular one corresponds to the so-called
Levenshtein or edit distance:
A error is the deletion, insertion, or substitution of a single
character
This model is simple enough to permit fast searching,

being useful for most IR scenarios
This can be extended to approximate pattern matching
Dynamic Programming
The classical solution to approximate string matching is
based on dynamic programming
A matrix C[0..m, 0..n] is filled column by column, where
C[i, j] represents the minimum number of errors needed
to match p1 p2 . . . pi to some suffix of t1 t2 . . . tj
This is computed as follows:
C[0, j] = 0,
C[i, 0] = i,
C[i, j] = if (pi = tj ) then C[i − 1, j − 1]
else 1 + min(C[i − 1, j], C[i, j − 1], C[i − 1, j − 1]),
where a match is reported at text positions j such that

C[m, j] ≤ k
Dynamic Programming
The dynamic programming algorithm to search for
‘colour’ in the text kolorama with k = 2 errors
k o l o r a m a
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
c 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
o 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 2 2
l 3 3 2 1 2 2 3 3 3
o 4 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 4
u 5 5 4 3 2 2 3 4 5
r 6 6 5 4 3 2* 3 4 5
The starred entry indicates a position finishing an

approximate occurrence
Dynamic Programming
The previous algorithm requires O(mn) time
Several extensions of it have been presented that
achieve O(kn) time
A simple O(kn) algorithm is obtained by computing each column
only up to the point where one knows that all the subsequent cell
values will exceed k
The memory needed can also be reduced to O(kn)
Dynamic Programming
Figure below gives the pseudocode for this variant
Approximate-DP (T = t1 t2 . . . tn , P = p1 p2 . . . pm , k)
(1) for i ← 0 . . . m do C[i] ← i
(2) last ← k + 1
(3) for j ← 1 . . . n do
(4) pC, nC ← 0
(5) for i ← 1 . . . last do
(6) if pi = tj then nC ← pC
(7) else
(8) if pC < nC then nC ← pC
(9) if C[i] < nC then nC ← C[i]
(10) nC ← nC + 1
(11) pC ← C[i]
(12) C[i] ← nC
(13) if nC ≤ k
(14) then if last = m then report an occurrence ending at position i
(15) else last ← last + 1
(16) else while C[last − 1] > k do last ← last − 1
Automata and Bit-parallelism
Approximate string matching can also be expressed as
an NFA search
Figure below depicts an NFA for approximate string
matching for the pattern ‘colour’ with two errors
c o l o u r no errors
¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡
c o l o u r 1 error
¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡
c o l o u r 2 errors
Although the search phase is O(n), the NFA tends to be
large (O(kn))
A better solution, based on bit-parallelism, is an
extension of Shift-And
We can simulate k + 1 Shift-And processes while taking
care of vertical and diagonal arrows as well
Pseudocode for approximate string matching using the
Shift-And algorithm
Approximate-Shift-And (T = t1 t2 . . . tn , P = p1 p2 . . . pm , k)
(1) for c ∈ Σ do B[c] ← 0
(2) for j ← 1 . . . m do B[pj ] ← B[pj ] | (1 << (j − 1))
(3) for i ← 0 . . . k do Di ← (1 << i) − 1
(4) for j ← 1 . . . n do
(5) pD ← D0
(6) nD, D0 ← ((D0 << 1) | 1) & B[ti ]
(7) for i ← 1 . . . k do
(8) nD ← ((Di << 1) & B[ti ]) | pD | ((pD | nD) << 1) | 1
(9) pD ← Di , Di ← nD
(10) if nD & (1 << (m − 1)) += 0
(11) then report an occurrence ending at position i
Filtration
Frequently it is easier to tell that a text position cannot
match than to ensure that it matches with k errors
Filtration is based on applying a fast filter over the text,
which hopefully discards most of the text positions
Then we can apply an approximate search algorithm
over the areas that could not be discarded
A simple and fast filter:
Split the pattern into k + 1 pieces of about the same length
Then we can run a multi-pattern search algorithm for the pieces
If piece pj . . . pj ! appears in ti . . . ti! , then we run an approximate
string matching algorithm over ti−j+1−k . . . ti−j+m+k
Searching Compressed Text
An extension of traditional compression mechanisms
gives a very powerful way of matching much more
complex patterns
Let us start with phrase queries that can be searched
for by
compressing each of its words and
searching the compressed text for the concatenated string of
target symbols
This is true as long as

the phrase is made up of simple words, each of which can be
translated into one codeword, and
we want the separators to appear exactly as in the query
A more robust search mechanism is based in word
patterns
For example, we may wish to search for:
Any word matching ‘United’ in case-insensitive form and
permitting two errors
Then a separator
And then any word matching ‘States’ in case-insensitive form
and permitting two errors
This search problem can be modeled by means of an

automaton over codewords
Let C be the set of different codewords created by the
compressor
We can take C as an alphabet and see the compressed
text as a sequence of atomic symbols over C
Our pattern has three positions, each denoting a class
of characters:
The first is the set of codewords corresponding to words that
match ‘United’ in case-insensitive form and allowing two errors
The second is the set of codewords for separators and is an
optional class
The third is like the first but for the word ‘States’
The Figure below illustrates the previous example
, \n 010
\n 010
States 001
any
UNITED 100
United separator States

United 100
Unnited 100 ¡
state 001
unates 101
unite 100
Vocabulary B[ ] table
(alphabet)
This process can be used to search for much more
complex patterns
Assume that we wish to search for ‘the number of
elements successfully classified’, or
something alike
Many other phrases can actually mean more or less the
same, for example:
the number of elements classified with success
the elements successfully classified
the number of elements we successfully classified
the number of elements that were successfully classified
the number of elements correctly classified
the number of elements we could correctly classify
...
To recover from linguistic variants as shown above we
must resort to word-level approximate string matching
In this model, we permit a limited number of missing,
extra, or substituted words
For example, with 3 word-level errors we can recover from all the
variants in the example above
In multimedia data, we can represent every object by
several numerical features
For example, imagine an image from where we can
extract a color histogram, edge positions, etc
One way to search in this case is to map these object
features into points in a multi-dimensional space
Another approach is to have a distance function for
objects and then use a distance based index
The main mapping methods form three main classes:
R∗ -trees and the rest of the R-tree family,
linear quadtrees,
grid-files
The R-tree-based methods seem to be most robust for
higher dimensions
The R-tree represents a spatial object by its minimum
bounding rectangle (MBR)
Data rectangles are grouped to form parent nodes,
which are recursively grouped, to form grandparent
nodes and, eventually, a tree hierarchy
Disk pages are consecutive byte positions on the
surface of the disk that are fetched with one disk access
The goal of the insertion, split, and deletion routines is
to give trees that will have good clustering
Figure below illustrates data rectangles (in black),
organized in an R-tree with fanout 3
Multi-dimensional Search
A range query specifies a region of interest, requiring all
the data regions that intersect it
To answer this query, we first retrieve a superset of the
qualifying data regions:
We compute the MBR of the query region, and then we
recursively descend the R-tree, excluding the branches whose
MBRs do not intersect the query MBR
Thus, the R-tree will give us quickly the data regions whose MBR
intersects the MBR of the query region
The retrieved data regions will be further examined for

intersection with the query region
Multi-dimensional Search
The data structure of the R-tree for the previous figure
is (fanout = 3)

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Modern Information Retrieval

Text Classification, Modern Information Retrieval, Addison Wesley, 2009 – p. 1

To allow searching documents on a subject or topic

Text Classification, Modern Information Retrieval, Addison Wesley, 2009 – p. 2

Related problem: partition docs into subsets, no labels

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Broad definition, admits supervised and unsupervised

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Apply K-means repeatedly, with K=2

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Decision Tree (DT) allows predicting values of a given

Text Classification, Modern Information Retrieval, Addison Wesley, 2009 – p. 38

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Id Play Outlook Temperature Humidity Windy

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DT = (V, E; r; lI , lL , lE ): a six-tuple where

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Selection of terms with high information gain tends to

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