Duality in information retrieval and the hypergeometric distribution
Leo Egghe, Ronald Rousseau · Journal of Documentation · 1997
Duality is an important topic in informetrics, especially in connection with the classical informetric laws. Yet this concept is less studied in information retrieval. It deals with the unification or symmetry between queries and documents, search formulation versus indexing, and relevant versus retrieved documents. These ideas are elaborated in this note and the connection with the hypergeometric distribution is highlighted.