"Query Expansion using Associative Methods"

Supervised by Dr MR Hepple

Abstract

From looking at word association to query expansion, this dissertation investigates query expansion using associated words discovered through Schutze's word space method. We find that this method slightly increases recall at the cost of precision, though this experiment would be best run on a corpus designed for query expansion to get a proper result.

Attempts are also made to improve precision, through using techniques such as Boolean search and limiting the terms which were added to the search. Both methods showed improvement in precision, while another method to improve precision through boosting terms was not useful due to loss in recall.