Method and apparatus for maintaining and navigating a non-hierarchical personal spatial file system

• US 8,812,507 B2
• Filed: 05/09/2013
• Issued: 08/19/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 11/06/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Cofino, Thomas A., Lenchner, Jonathan
• Primary Examiner(s): Kerzhner, Aleksandr
• Application Number:
  US13/890,496
• Publication Number:
  US 20130318100A1
• Time in Patent Office: 467 Days
• Field of Search: 707/739, 707/999.205
• US Class Current: 707/739
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/22 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3344 using natural language analysis

Abstract

A self-organizing personal file system is disclosed that evaluates the “importance” of terms and phrases in a document in a personal corpus relative to usage in a reference corpus. A personalized term weighting scheme assigns a weight to terms or phrases based on the frequency of occurrence of the corresponding term or phrase in a reference corpus. Documents are positioned in a visual file space associated with a personal corpus by storing each of the documents with an indication of the term weight for terms appearing in the corresponding document. A singular value decomposition is performed based on the term weights to position a given document in the visual file space based on a relative frequency distribution of terms of the document compared to the occurrence of such terms in a reference corpus.

Claims

1. A method for positioning one or more documents in a visual file space associated with a personal corpus, said method comprising the steps of:

storing each of said documents with an indication of term weight for terms appearing in said corresponding document, wherein said term weight is obtained by dividing a fractional frequency of said term in said document by a fractional frequency of said term in said reference corpus, wherein said fractional frequency of said term in said document is the number of occurrences of the term in the document divided by the total number of terms in the document and wherein said fractional frequency of said term in said reference corpus is the number of occurrences of the term in the reference corpus divided by the total number of words in the reference corpus; and

performing a singular value decomposition based on said term weights to position a given document in said visual file space based on a relative frequency distribution of terms of said document compared to the occurrence of such terms in a reference corpus.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said step of performing a singular value decomposition based on said term weights comprises the step of choosing orthogonal coordinates based on taking the singular vectors corresponding to the largest singular values in said singular value decomposition of the term by document matrix comprised of all documents from the personal corpus.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein a coordinatization of said document relative to a given term is the fractional frequency of said term in said document divided by a fractional frequency of said term in said reference corpus.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of positioning landmarks in said visual file space indicating terms that are correlated to terms associated with axes of the file system.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said landmarks are positioned in accordance with a degree of correlation with each file system axis.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of providing an indication of a total information content for said documents.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of providing an indication of documents having the highest correlation to one or more user-specified keywords.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of rendering additional orthogonal axes.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein said additional orthogonal axes allow a user to drag one of said additional orthogonal axes on top of an already existing axis, resulting in a new set of reference coordinates and a rerendering of relevant documents and landmarks.

10. The method of claim 1, whereby a user can drill in on a particular axis to select a larger number of phrase stems associated with said terms, thereby obtaining a finer grain of detail in the spatial presentation.

11. The method of claim 1, whereby a user can drill out on a particular axis to select a smaller number of phrase stems associated with said terms, thereby obtaining a coarser grain of detail in the spatial presentation.

12. A system for positioning one or more documents in a visual file space associated with a personal corpus, said method comprising:

a memory that stores computer-readable code; and

a processor operatively coupled to said memory, said processor configured to implement said computer-readable code, said computer-readable code configured to;

store each of said documents with an indication of term weight for terms appearing in said corresponding document, wherein said term weight is obtained by dividing a fractional frequency of said term in said document by a fractional frequency of said term in said reference corpus, wherein said fractional frequency of said term in said document is the number of occurrences of the term in the document divided by the total number of terms in the document and wherein said fractional frequency of said term in said reference corpus is the number of occurrences of the term in the reference corpus divided by the total number of words in the reference corpus; and

perform a singular value decomposition based on said term weights to position a given document in said visual file space based on a relative frequency distribution of terms of said document compared to the occurrence of such terms in a reference corpus.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein a coordinatization of said document relative to a given term is the fractional frequency of said term in said document divided by a fractional frequency of said term in said reference corpus.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein said landmarks are positioned in accordance with a degree of correlation with each file system axis.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein said additional orthogonal axes allow a user to drag one of said additional orthogonal axes on top of an already existing axis, resulting in a new set of reference coordinates and a rerendering of relevant documents and landmarks.

16. An article of manufacture for positioning one or more documents in a visual file space associated with a personal corpus, said method comprising:

a non-transitory computer readable medium having computer readable code means embodied thereon, said computer readable program code means comprising;

a step to store each of said documents with an indication of term weight for terms appearing in said corresponding document, wherein said term weight is obtained by dividing a fractional frequency of said term in said document by a fractional frequency of said term in said reference corpus, wherein said fractional frequency of said term in said document is the number of occurrences of the term in the document divided by the total number of terms in the document and wherein said fractional frequency of said term in said reference corpus is the number of occurrences of the term in the reference corpus divided by the total number of words in the reference corpus;

a step to determine a second weight of said one or more terms based on a number of occurrences in a reference corpus; and

a step to perform a singular value decomposition based on said term weights to position a given document in said visual file space based on a relative frequency distribution of terms of said document compared to the occurrence of such terms in a reference corpus.