Querying large Collections of Mathematical Publications - NTCIR10 Math Task -
Moritz Schubotz, Marcus Leich, Volker Markl · NTCIR · 2013
In this paper, we present our approach for searching mathematical formulae. We focus on a batch query approach that does not rely on specialized indexes, which are usually domain dependent and restrict the expressiveness of the query language. Instead, we use Stratosphere, a distributed data processing platform for Big Data Analytics that accesses data in a non-indexed format. This system is very eective for answering batches of queries that a researcher may wish to evaluate in bulk on large data sets. We demonstrate our approach using the NTCIR10 Math task, which provides a set of formula patterns and a test data corpus. We showcase a simple data analysis program for answering the given queries. We interpret the patterns as regular expressions and assume that matches to these expressions are also relevant search results to the end-user. Based on the evaluation of our results by mathematicians from Zentralblatt Math and mathematics students from Jacobs University, we conclude that our assumption holds principally with regard to precision and recall. Our work is just a rst step towards a well-dened query language and processing system for scientic publications that allows researchers to specify their information need in terms of mathematical formulae and their contexts. We envision that our system can be utilized to realize such a vision.