Answer Selection and Confidence Estimation

We focused on two issues: answer selection and confidence estimation. We found that some simple constraints on the candidate answers can improve a pure IR-based technique for answer selection. We also found that a few simple features derived from the questionanswer pairs can be used for effective confidence estimation. Our results also confirmed findings by Dumais et al, 2002 that the World-Wide Web is a very useful resource for answering TREC-style factoid questions.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: NDQA
• Authors: Jinxi Xu, Ana Licuanan, Jonathan May, Scott Miller, Ralph M. Weischedel
• Keywords: Answer Selection, Confidence Estimation, Education, Effective Confidence Estimation, NDQA 2003