System and method for domain adaptation in question answering

• US 9,965,971 B2
• Filed: 09/15/2015
• Issued: 05/08/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 05/14/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bagchi, Sugato, Ferrucci, David A., Gondek, David C., Levas, Anthony T., Zadrozny, Wlodek W.
• Primary Examiner(s): Chbouki, Tarek
• Application Number:
  US14/854,277
• Publication Number:
  US 20160005324A1
• Time in Patent Office: 966 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 7/00 Electrically-operated teaching apparatus or devices working with questions and answers mechanically operated G09B3/00; computing arrangements G06F

Abstract

The present disclosure relates generally to question answering systems and methods and, particularly, to systems and methods for domain adaptation in question answering.

Claims

1. A method for providing adaptation to a question answering system, wherein the question answering system has associated therewith a plurality of trace data and a question-answer set, the method comprising the steps of:

submitting a set of questions to the question answering system;

receiving back from the question answering system a set of answers generated in response to the set of questions, said set of answers obtained based on content of documents;

comparing the set of answers received back from the question answering system to answers in the question-answer set; and

generating, based on the comparison and the plurality of trace data, an estimate of headroom per content type, said headroom per content type estimated as a percentage or number of documents lacking the question and answer content, where the question counts as an element of the headroom, the headroom per content type comprising a possible improvement relative to possible addition of new content for the question-answer set;

wherein the trace data is generated during the generation of the set of answers.