A universal method of information retrieval evaluation: the "missing" link M and the universal IR surface

• Authors: L. Egghe
• Venue: Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
• Year: 2004

The paper shows that the present evaluation methods in information retrieval (basically recall R and precision P and in some cases fallout F) lack universal comparability in the sense that their values depend on the generality of the IR problem. A solution is given by using all "parts" of the database, including the non-relevant documents and also the not-retrieved documents. It turns out that the solution is given by introducing the measure M being the fraction of the not-retrieved documents that are relevant (hence the "miss" measure). We prove that--independent of the IR problem or of the IR action--the quadruple (P, R, F, M) belongs to a universal IR surface, being the same for all IR-activities. This universality is then exploited by defining a new measure for evaluation in IR allowing for unbiased comparisons of all IR results. We also show that only using one, two or even three measures from the set {P, R, F, M} necessary leads to evaluation measures that are non-universal and hence not capable of comparing different IR situations.