Abebe Rorissa

Doctoral Candidate
School of Library and Information Sciences
University of North Texas

“Models of Similarity and their Applications in
Information Retrieval"

Tuesday, March 15, 2005
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Room 501, IS Building

Abstract: Similarity and categorization play significant roles in human perception and cognition. Furthermore, similarity is one of the most widely researched constructs and forms the basis for several theories in the fields of psychology and cognition. In Library & information science, we organize materials (e.g. through classification systems) according to their content similarity and some information retrieval systems use similarity matching mechanisms (called similarity measures) based on models of similarity. The presentation will review applications of four major models of similarity in information retrieval and report results of a study conducted to test one of the models, Tversky's Contrast Model."