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Information Distance from a Question to an Answer

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Computing and Combinatorics (COCOON 2007)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 4598))

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Abstract

We know how to measure distance from Beijing to Toronto. However, do you know how to measure the distance between two information carrying entities? For example: two genomes, two music scores, two programs, two articles, two emails, or from a question to an answer? Furthermore, such a distance measure must be application-independent, must be universal in the sense it is provably better than all other distances, and must be applicable.

From a simple and accepted assumption in thermodynamics, we have developed such a theory. I will present this theory and will present one of the new applications of this theory: a question answering system.

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Guohui Lin

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© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Li, M. (2007). Information Distance from a Question to an Answer. In: Lin, G. (eds) Computing and Combinatorics. COCOON 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4598. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73545-8_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73545-8_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73544-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73545-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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