Score standardization for inter-collection comparison of retrieval systems

  • Authors:

  • William Webber;Alistair Moffat;Justin Zobel

  • Affiliations:

  • The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia;The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia;The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 31st annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

The goal of system evaluation in information retrieval has always been to determine which of a set of systems is superior on a given collection. The tool used to determine system ordering is an evaluation metric such as average precision, which computes relative, collection-specific scores. We argue that a broader goal is achievable. In this paper we demonstrate that, by use of standardization, scores can be substantially independent of a particular collection, allowing systems to be compared even when they have been tested on different collections. Compared to current methods, our techniques provide richer information about system performance, improved clarity in outcome reporting, and greater simplicity in reviewing results from disparate sources.