Saturday, July 30, 2005

Finding a needle in a haystack

Dr. Matthew Koll's brilliant illustration of a search on
http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Jan-00/track_3.html
may serve as the beginning of mapping all sorts of searches.

He says that:

Searching is like finding a needle in a haystack, but not all searches are the
same. "Finding a needle in a haystack" can mean:

  • A known needle in a known haystack
  • A known needle in an unknown haystack
  • An unknown needle in an unknown haystack
  • Any needle in a haystack
  • The sharpest needle in a haystack
  • Most of the sharpest needles in a haystack
  • All the needles in a haystack
  • Affirmation of no needles in the haystack
  • Things like needles in any haystack
  • Let me know whenever a new needle shows up
  • Where are the haystacks?
  • Needles, haystacks – whatever

I tried to find an example for each sort of search and decided that:

  • Looking for Parents home in Herzliya is a known needle in the Yellow pages which are a known haystack.
  • Looking for a banana that has an apple flavor is a known needle in the WWW which is a known haystack.
  • Looking for Air pollution in the Haifa bay area in Israel is an example for all the needles in a haystack since it is for an academic research and you can't submit your paper unless you know all the publications in your field of research.
  • Looking for a similar patent to Qtsaver patent is an unknown needle in an unknown haystack and I'll know it for sure only when we get the patent (Now it's pending).
  • "Let me know whenever a new needle shows up" is what Google Alert and RSS feeds do.

    Martin Lessard adds on
    http://martinlessard.blogspot.com/2004/09/information-retrieval-finding-needle.html

Wrong query for a needle in a haystack, and finding something anyway - That's
what is called serendipity.




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