DETERMINING UTILITY OF A QUESTION
First Claim
1. A method in a computing device for evaluating utility of a question, the method comprising:
- providing a collection of questions, each question having one or more words;
calculating n-gram probabilities for the words within the questions of the collection; and
for each question in the collection, calculating a language model utility score of that question occurring in the collection based on the n-gram probabilities of words of that question following preceding n−
1 words, wherein the language model utility score is a measure of the utility of the question.
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Abstract
A question search system provides a collection of questions having words for use in evaluating the utility of the questions based on a language model. The question search system calculates n-gram probabilities for words within the questions of the collection. The n-gram probability of a word for a sequence of n−1 words indicates the probability of that word being next after that sequence in the collection of questions. The n-gram probabilities for the words of the collection represent the language model of the collection. The question search system calculates a language model utility score for each question within a collection that indicates the likelihood that a question is repeatedly asked by users. The question search system derives the language model utility score for a question from the n-gram probabilities of the words within that question.
216 Citations
21 Claims
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1. A method in a computing device for evaluating utility of a question, the method comprising:
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providing a collection of questions, each question having one or more words; calculating n-gram probabilities for the words within the questions of the collection; and for each question in the collection, calculating a language model utility score of that question occurring in the collection based on the n-gram probabilities of words of that question following preceding n−
1 words, wherein the language model utility score is a measure of the utility of the question. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A computing device for ranking questions that are relevant to queried questions, comprising:
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a collection store providing a collection of questions, each question having one or more words; a component that calculates n-gram probabilities for words following sequences of n−
1 words within the questions of the collection;a component that calculates, for each question in the collection, a language model utility score of that question occurring in the collection based on the probabilities of the n-grams of that question, the language model utility score being calculated using a smoothing technique to account for data sparseness and a length normalization technique to account for differences in lengths of the question; a component that receives from a user a queried question; a component that identifies questions of the collection that are relevant to the queried question, each identified question having a relevance score; a component that, for each identified question, generates a combined score for the identified question based on the relevance score for that identified question and the language model utility score for that identified question; and a component that displays to the user an indication of identified questions with a ranking based on the combined scores of the identified questions. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. A computer-readable storage medium containing instructions for controlling a computing device to rank questions that are relevant to queried questions, by a method comprising:
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providing a collection of questions, each question having one or more words; for each question of the collection, calculating a utility score for the question, the utility score indicating a likelihood that the question is submitted; receiving a queried question; identifying questions of the collection that are relevant to the queried question; for each identified question, generating a ranking for the identified question based on the utility scores of the identified questions; and providing the identified questions with their ranking as a search result for the queried question. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20, 21)
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Specification