NDLI: Examining Additivity and Weak Baselines

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Scholer, Falk Sanderson, Mark Vallet, David Kharazmi, Sadegh
Copyright Year	2016
Abstract	We present a study of which baseline to use when testing a new retrieval technique. In contrast to past work, we show that measuring a statistically significant improvement over a weak baseline is not a good predictor of whether a similar improvement will be measured on a strong baseline. Sometimes strong baselines are made worse when a new technique is applied. We investigate whether conducting comparisons against a range of weaker baselines can increase confidence that an observed effect will also show improvements on a stronger baseline. Our results indicate that this is not the case -- at best, testing against a range of baselines means that an experimenter can be more confident that the new technique is unlikely to significantly harm a strong baseline. Examining recent past work, we present evidence that the information retrieval (IR) community continues to test against weak baselines. This is unfortunate as, in light of our experiments, we conclude that the only way to be confident that a new technique is a contribution is to compare it against nothing less than the state of the art.
Starting Page	1
Ending Page	18
Page Count	18
File Format	PDF
ISSN	10468188
e-ISSN	15582868
DOI	10.1145/2882782
Volume Number	34
Issue Number	4
Journal	ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS)
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	2016-06-09
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Baselines Evaluation Information retrieval
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Computer Science Applications Information Systems Business, Management and Accounting

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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