Abstract. A mismatch between differenteventspaceshasbeen used toargue against rank equivalence of classic probabilistic models of information retrieval and language models. We question the effectiveness of this strategy and we argue that a convincing solution should be sought in a correct procedure to design adequate priors for probabilistic reasoning. Acknowledging our solution of the event space issue invites to rethink the relation between probabilistic models, statistics and logic in the context of IR.
Corrado Boscarino, Arjen P. de Vries