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Question Answering By Passage Selection

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Book cover Advances in Open Domain Question Answering

Part of the book series: Text, Speech and Language Technology ((TLTB,volume 32))

The MultiText QA System performs question answering using a two step passage selection method. In the first step, an arbitrary passage retrieval algorithm efficiently identifies hotspots in a large target corpus where the answer might be located. In the second step, an answer selection algorithm analyzes these hotspots, considering such factors as answer type and candidate redundancy, to extract short answer snippets. This chapter describes both steps in detail, with the goal of providing sufficient information to allow independent implementation. The method is evaluated using the test collection developed for the TREC 2001 question answering track.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Charles L. A. Clarke, Gordon V. Cormack, Thomas R. Lynam & Egidio L. Terra

Authors
  1. Charles L. A. Clarke
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  2. Gordon V. Cormack
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  3. Thomas R. Lynam
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  4. Egidio L. Terra
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. State University of New York at Albany, 1400 Washington Avenue, 12222, Albany, NY, USA

    Tomek Strzalkowski

  2. University of Texas at Dallas, 75083, Richardson, TX, USA

    Sanda M. Harabagiu

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Clarke, C.L.A., Cormack, G.V., Lynam, T.R., Terra, E.L. (2008). Question Answering By Passage Selection. In: Strzalkowski, T., Harabagiu, S.M. (eds) Advances in Open Domain Question Answering. Text, Speech and Language Technology, vol 32. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4746-6_8

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