Validating Query Simulators: An Experiment Using Commercial Searches and Purchases

Publication Type  Conference Paper
Author  Huurnink B., Hofmann K., de Rijke M., Bron M.
Year of Publication  2010
Conference Name  CLEF 2010: Conference on Multilingual and Multimodal Information Access Evaluation
Month Published  September
Publisher  Springer
Conference Location  Padova
Abstract  

We design and validate simulators for generating queries and relevance judgments for retrieval system evaluation. We develop a simulation framework that incorporates existing and new simulation strategies. To validate a simulator, we assess whether evaluation using its output data ranks retrieval systems in the same way as evaluation using real-world data. The real-world data is obtained using logged commercial searches and associated purchase decisions. While no simulator reproduces an ideal ranking, there is a large variation in simulator performance that allows us to distinguish those that are better suited to creating artificial testbeds for retrieval experiments. Incorporating knowledge about document structure in the query generation process helps create more realistic simulators.

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