Efficiently estimating retrievability bias

Abstract

Retrievability is the measure of how easily a document can be retrieved using a particular retrieval system. The extent to which a retrieval system favours certain documents over others (as expressed by their retrievability scores) determines the level of bias the system imposes on a collection. Recently it has been shown that it is possible to tune a retrieval system by minimising the retrievability bias. However, to perform such a retrievability analysis often requires posing millions upon millions of queries. In this paper, we examine how many queries are needed to obtain a reliable and useful approximation of the retrievability bias imposed by the system, and an estimate of the individual retrievability of documents in the collection. We find that a reliable estimate of retrievability bias can be obtained, in some cases, with 90% less queries than are typically used while estimating document retrievability can be done with up to 60% less queries. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.