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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.notes
Subject: Re: Information Overload and What We Can Do About It
Message-ID: <830@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 6-Oct-85 19:46:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.830
Posted: Sun Oct  6 19:46:21 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 8-Oct-85 04:11:14 EDT
References: <10550@ucbvax.ARPA>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
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Xref: watmath net.news:4029 net.news.notes:35

One problem with automatic keyword generation is that you tend
to get LOTS of keywords.  The more keywords, the more "false"
matches (in either a positive or negation sense).  That is, words
that have been classified as keywords by the system but which
have little or nothing to do with the primary topic of the
article "confuse" the match system.  Articles that you really
didn't want to see start showing up as matches (since they matched
on "extraneous" keywords) and articles you wanted to see may often be missed
(since search keys that specified the exclusion of articles containing
certain keywords will trigger on all these "extra" keywords as well!)

I can point at a variety of real-world examples for both of these
keyword error modalities if desired.

--Lauren--