Statistics in information retrieval experiments

摘要

Nearly all people use statistics, but very often in the wrong way. To give some clues for the proper use of statistics, a framework will be developed in this paper to help one understand the methodology of applying statistics in IR experiments.The central idea of this framework is that one should i) distinguish between two kinds of models: an expert model and a mathematical-statistical model, and ii) recognize that these two models are highly interdependent.The argument for the need for these two models (and the distinction between them) will follow a meta-scientiftc approach of J. D. Sneed [1].To make the numerous relationships in this framework more comprehensible a graphical method called Isac is used.