Evaluation in (XML) information retrieval
Benjamin Piwowarski, Georges Dupret · 2006
Standard Information Retrieval (IR) metrics assume a simple model where documents are understood as independent units. Such an assumption is not adapted to new paradigms like XML or Web IR where retrievable informations are parts of documents or sets of related documents. Moreover, classical hypotheses assumes that the user ignores the structural or logical context of document elements and hence the possibility of navigation between units. EPRUM is a generalisation of Precision-Recall (PR) that aims at allowing the user to navigate or browse in the corpus structure. Like the Cumulated Gain metrics, it is able to handle continuous valued relevance. We apply and compare EPRUM in the context of XML Retrieval -- a very active field for evaluation metrics. We also explain how EPRUM can be used in other IR paradigms.