Computing the relevance of a document to concepts not specified in the document

• US 9,710,570 B2
• Filed: 07/14/2014
• Issued: 07/18/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 07/14/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Franceschini, Michele M., Lastras-Montano, Luis A., Soares, Livio B., Wegman, Mark N.
• Primary Examiner(s): Le, Uyen
• Application Number:
  US14/330,417
• Publication Number:
  US 20160012054A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,100 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/313 Selection or weighting of terms for indexing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/367 Ontology
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9024 Graphs; Linked lists G06F16/9027 takes precedence

Abstract

According to an aspect, conceptual analysis of a document includes accessing a concept graph that includes a plurality of nodes and edges. Each node represents a concept and each edge represents a known relation between two concepts. Conceptual analysis of the document further includes computing a relevance of the document to concepts in the concept graph. The computing includes receiving a priori information about the document including concepts extracted from the document. The concepts extracted from the document include a subset of the concepts in the concept graph. The computing also includes combining the a priori information and the concept graph to generate a posteriori information that indicates a likelihood that the document is related to each of the concepts in the concept graph.

Claims

1. A computer program product for conceptual analysis of a document, the computer program product comprising:

a tangible storage medium readable by a processing circuit and storing instructions for execution by the processing circuit to perform a method comprising;

accessing a concept graph that includes a plurality of nodes and edges, each node representing a concept and each edge representing a known relation between two concepts; and

computing a relevance of the document to concepts in the concept graph, the computing comprising;

receiving a priori information about the document including concepts extracted from the document, probabilities of each of the concepts extracted from the document being located in a pool of concepts extracted from the document, and confidence scores corresponding to each of the concepts extracted from the document, wherein the concepts extracted from the document include a subset of the concepts in the concept graph; and

combining the a priori information and the concept graph to generate a posteriori information that includes a reverse index that indicates a likelihood that the document is related to each of the concepts in the concept graph, the reverse index accessible to a computer system for determining a relevance of the document to a query received from an agent external to the computer system,

the combining including calculating a relevance of the document to concepts in the graph not extracted from the document based on a degree of association in the concept graph between the concepts extracted from the document and the concepts in the graph not extracted from the document.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the a posteriori information is responsive to a metric that measures a relevance between each of the concepts in the concept graph and each concept in a selected subset of the concepts extracted from the document.

3. The computer program product of claim 2, wherein the metric utilizes paths in the concept graph connecting each concept in the selected subset of the concepts extracted from the document to each of the concepts in the concept graph.

4. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the a posteriori information comprises a weighted averaging of vectors associated with extracted concepts, and the weight for an extracted concept is responsive to at least one of:

a degree to which the extracted concept is related to the other extracted concepts; and

a frequency in which the extracted concept appears in the document.

5. A system for conceptual analysis of a document, the system comprising:

a memory having computer readable computer instructions; and

a processor for executing the computer readable instructions, the computer readable instructions including;

accessing a concept graph that includes a plurality of nodes and edges, each node representing a concept and each edge representing a known relation between two concepts; and

computing a relevance of the document to concepts in the concept graph, the computing comprising;

receiving a priori information about the document including concepts extracted from the document, probabilities of each of the concepts extracted from the document being located in a pool of concepts extracted from the document, and confidence scores corresponding to each of the concepts extracted from the document, wherein the concepts extracted from the document include a subset of the concepts in the concept graph; and

combining the a priori information and the concept graph to generate a posteriori information that includes a reverse index that indicates a likelihood that the document is related to each of the concepts in the concept graph, the reverse index accessible to a computer system for determining a relevance of the document to a query received from an agent external to the computer system,

the combining including calculating a relevance of the document to concepts in the graph not extracted from the document based on a degree of association in the concept graph between the concepts extracted from the document and the concepts in the graph not extracted from the document.