The relationship between precision and recall seems to be an inverse one. Attempts to increase the precision of a search tend to negatively impact on the recall of the search and vice versa. The ability to resolve this relationship in an effective manner has been critical to the success of search engines such as Google. Precision and recall are not simply a function of the underlying search algorithms however, they are also influenced by the search terms entered by the user. Effective legal research requires the ability to maximise recall without jeopardising the precision of a search.
The use of metadata may assist the searching process. Metadata can be used to contextualise data, meaning that the search engine has a larger base of information from which to determine relevance and thereby increase the precision of the search. It may also be used to automatically correlate the terms used in the search with synonomous terms thereby increasing the recall of the search and reducing the need for multiple searches to be performed.
— Alex Brown 2006/08/05 17:08 Created