Synonyms
Definition
Success at n is an information retrieval relevance measure, equal to 1 if the top-n documents contain a relevant document and 0 otherwise. When averaged across multiple queries, the success rate at n indicates how often something relevant was retrieved within the top-n.
Key Points
A system with a high success rate will be one that rarely retrieves zero relevant documents. Therefore,success rate can be employed to monitor failure. The success rate of two systems may differ even if they have the same mean precision at n, because one system has higher variance than the other. Success at n models the satisfaction of a user who does not need to see many relevant documents, is prepared to view up to n results and is disappointed by a completely irrelevant top-n.
Cross-References
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Craswell, N. (2016). Success at n. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_485-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_485-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering