A proposal for the evaluation of adaptive information retrieval systems using simulated interaction

The Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) is involved in building interactive adaptive systems which combine Information Retrieval (IR), Adaptive Hypermedia (AH) and adaptive web techniques and technologies. The complex functionality of these systems coupled with the variety of potential users means that the experiments necessary to evaluate such systems are difficult to plan, implement and execute. This evaluation requires both component-level scientific evaluation and user-based evaluation. Automated replication of experiments and simulation of user interaction would be hugely beneficial in the evaluation of adaptive information retrieval systems (AIRS). This paper proposes a methodology for the evaluation of AIRS which leverages simulated interaction. The hybrid approach detailed combines: (i) user-centred methods for simulating interaction and personalisation; (ii) evaluation metrics that combine Human Computer Interaction (HCI), AH and IR techniques; and (iii) the use of qualitative and quantitative evaluations. The benefits and limitations of evaluations based on user simulations are also discussed

Applying digital content management to support localisation

The retrieval and presentation of digital content such as that on the World Wide Web (WWW) is a substantial area of research. While recent years have seen huge expansion in the size of web-based archives that can be searched efficiently by commercial search engines, the presentation of potentially relevant content is still limited to ranked document lists represented by simple text snippets or image keyframe surrogates. There is expanding interest in techniques to personalise the presentation of content to improve the richness and effectiveness of the user experience. One of the most significant challenges to achieving this is the increasingly multilingual nature of this data, and the need to provide suitably localised responses to users based on this content. The Digital Content Management (DCM) track of the Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) is seeking to develop technologies to support advanced personalised access and presentation of information by combining elements from the existing research areas of Adaptive Hypermedia and Information Retrieval. The combination of these technologies is intended to produce significant improvements in the way users access information. We review key features of these technologies and introduce early ideas for how these technologies can support localisation and localised content before concluding with some impressions of future directions in DCM

Multilingual adaptive search for digital libraries

This paper describes a framework for Adaptive Multilingual Information Retrieval (AMIR) which allows multilingual resource discovery and delivery using on-the-fly machine translation of documents and queries. Result documents are presented to the user in a contextualised manner. Challenges and affordances of both Adaptive and Multilingual IR, with a particular focus on Digital Libraries, are detailed. The framework components are motivated by a series of results from experiments on query logs and documents from The European Library. We conclude that factoring adaptivity and multilinguality aspects into the search process can enhance the user’s experience with online Digital Libraries

Trends in the Statistical Assessment of Reliability

Changes in technology have had and will continue to have a strong effect on changes in the area of statistical assessment of reliability data. These changes include higher levels of integration in electronics, improvements in measurement technology and the deployment of sensors and smart chips into more products, dramatically improved computing power and storage technology, and the development of new, powerful statistical methods for graphics, inference, and experimental design and reliability test planning. This paper traces some of the history of the development of statistical methods for reliability assessment and makes some predictions about the future

On the construction of handcuffed designs

AbstractA handcuffed design with parameters ν, k, λ consists of a set of ordered k-subsets of a v-set, called handcuffed blocks; in a block (a1, a2, ak) each element is assumed to be “handcuffed” to its neighbors. A block, therefore, contains k − 1 handcuffed pairs, the pairs being considered unordered. Each element of the v-set appears in exactly r blocks, and each pair of distinct elements of the v-set is handcuffed in exactly A blocks of the design.These designs have been studied recently by Hung and Mendelsohn [1], who construct a number of families of such designs by recursive methods. In this paper we show how difference methods can be applied to the construction of handcuffed designs. The methods are powerful, and a number of families of designs are constructed. A main new result is the determination of necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of handcuffed designs for all parameter sets in which v is an odd prime power

Note on a family of BIBD's and sets of mutually orthogonal Latin squares

AbstractThe connection between two families of balanced incomplete block designs (BIBD's) and sets of mutually orthogonal Latin squares (MOLS) is noted. Known sets of MOLS then allow construction of corresponding BIBD's in these families

An investigation of Bhattacharya-type designs

AbstractQuasi-residual designs are balanced incomplete block designs having the parameters of a residual BIBD. For λ = 1 or 2 all quasi-residual designs are also residual designs, but a single counterexample due to Bhattacharya for the design (16, 24, 9, 6, 3) shows this not to be the case for λ = 3. We examine the block structure of this type of design, and use this information to construct eight new solutions for (16, 24, 9, 6, 3); along with the Bhattacharya design, these are the only known counterexamples for λ = 3.The more general case with λ > 3 is mentioned briefly