| Overview of the trec 2004 question answering track (2004) | |||||||||||||||
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| The TREC 2004 Question Answering track contained a single task in which question series were used to define a set of targets. Each series contained factoid and list questions and related to a single target. The final question in the series was an “Other ” question that asked for additional information about the target that was not covered by previous questions in the series. Each question type was evaluated separately with the final score a weighted average of the different component scores. Applying the combined measure on a per-series basis produces a QA task evaluation that more closely mimics classic document retrieval evaluation. The goal of the TREC question answering (QA) track is to foster research on systems that return answers themselves, rather than documents containing answers, in response to a question. The track started in TREC-8 (1999), with the first several editions of the track focused on factoid questions. A factoid question is a fact-based, short answer question such as How many calories are there in a Big Mac?. The task in the TREC 2003 QA track was a combined task that contained list and definition questions in addition to factoid questions [3]. A list question asks for different instances of a particular kind of information to be returned, such as List the names of chewing gums. Answering such questions requires a system to assemble an answer from information located in multiple documents. A definition question asks for interesting information about a particular person or thing such as Who is Vlad the Impaler? or What | |||||||||||||||
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