Hi - I'm wondering if she is using a definition of "database" that seems to be common in libraries, that means "a resource on the web that we pay for".
D
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alain Borel
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 10:24 AM
To: CODE4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Precision and Recall
Dave Caroline <dave.thearchivist_at_GMAIL.COM> a écrit :
> The questions seem related to search engines or should you be googling
> for full text indexes or the other more correct name inverted index.
> Because in the normal scheme of events databases return exactly what
> you ask for.
One could argue that the same thing happens with search engines. After all, both databases and search engines are deterministic programs that provide a set of records in response to a query.
Precision and recall are not determined by what you ask - what defines them is how relevant the output records are with respect to a real-life question. It isn't tied to a technology. Of course, it can be more or less difficult to translate this question into a query, and the program might be more or less "smart" while processing the query.
Both aspects affect precision and recall, in my opinion.
Anybody who ever used a bibliographic database using Google-like queries can testify that a database can have extremely poor precision and recall in some use cases ;-)
Best regards,
Alain Borel
EPFL Bibliothèque
Rolex Learning Center
1015 Lausanne (Switzerland)
Received on Fri Jun 03 2011 - 13:54:45 EDT