Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080313000 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR FACILITATING SKILL GAP ANALYSIS AND REMEDIATION BASED ON TAG ANALYTICS - This invention includes a workforce management system having a system bus, at least one database in communication with the system bus that includes data representative of workforce employees, and social networking data associated with the employees. A matching functional unit includes a text mining function for mining contextual information from the at least one database to generate context labels for an employee, a clustering function for generating concept labels for an employee, and a matching function that sorts and matches employees by the labels in accordance with a matching criteria. A user interface provides user input to the support operation of the workforce management system. | 12-18-2008 |
20090112841 | DOCUMENT SEARCHING USING CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION LEVERAGE AND INSIGHTS - A method and system are disclosed that enable a user to search a large collection of structured and unstructured documents using semantic concepts that the system provides to them, to search the most relevant business activity first, and then using one of the business activities as the additional context to search for specific document or documents that are most relevant. One aspect of the invention provides a methodology to perform concept-based structured search over document collections to obtain search results as business activities and associated relevant documents using the business activity context. The document collections are obtained by aggregating documents corresponding to a business activity. The instances are extracted from the document collections together with any concept-relationship specific heuristics in that domain. Another aspect of the invention enables the enterprise user to enter concepts and instances that define the search parameters using a structured user interface. | 04-30-2009 |
20090287678 | System and method for providing answers to questions - A system, method and computer program product for providing answers to questions based on any corpus of data. The method facilitates generating a number of candidate passages from the corpus that answer an input query, and finds the correct resulting answer by collecting supporting evidence from the multiple passages. By analyzing all retrieved passages and that passage's metadata in parallel, there is generated an output plurality of data structures including candidate answers based upon the analyzing. Then, by each of a plurality of parallel operating modules, supporting passage retrieval operations are performed upon the set of candidate answers, and for each candidate answer, the data corpus is traversed to find those passages having candidate answer in addition to query terms. All candidate answers are automatically scored causing the supporting passages by a plurality of scoring modules, each producing a module score. The modules scores are processed to determine one or more query answers; and, a query response is generated for delivery to a user based on the one or more query answers. | 11-19-2009 |
20090292687 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING QUESTION AND ANSWERS WITH DEFERRED TYPE EVALUATION - A system, method and computer program product for conducting questions and answers with deferred type evaluation based on any corpus of data. The method includes processing a query including waiting until a “Type” (i.e. a descriptor) is determined AND a candidate answer is provided; the Type is not required as part of a predetermined ontology but is only a lexical/grammatical item. Then, a search is conducted to look (search) for evidence that the candidate answer has the required LAT (e.g., as determined by a matching function that can leverage a parser, a semantic interpreter and/or a simple pattern matcher). In another embodiment, it may be attempted to match the LAT to a known Ontological Type and then look for a candidate answer up in an appropriate knowledge-base, database, and the like determined by that type. Then, all the evidence from all the different ways to determine that the candidate answer has the expected lexical answer type (LAT) is combined and one or more answers are delivered to a user. | 11-26-2009 |
20110125734 | QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS GENERATION - A system, method and/or computer program product for automatically generating questions and answers based on any corpus of data. The computer system, given a collection of textual documents, automatically generates collections of questions about the documents together with answers to those questions. In particular, such a process can be applied to the so called ‘open’ domain, where the type of the corpus is not given in advance, and neither is the ontology of the corpus. The system improves the exploring of large bodies of textual information. Applications implementing the system and method include new types of tutoring systems, educational question-answering games, national security and business analysis systems, etc. | 05-26-2011 |
20120077178 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DOMAIN ADAPTATION IN QUESTION ANSWERING - The present disclosure relates generally to question answering systems and methods and, particularly, to systems and methods for domain adaptation in question answering. | 03-29-2012 |
20120078873 | USING ONTOLOGICAL INFORMATION IN OPEN DOMAIN TYPE COERCION - A computer-implemented system, method and program product generates answers to questions in an input query text string. The method includes determining, by a programmed processor unit, a lexical answer type (LAT) string associated with an input query; automatically obtaining a candidate answer string to the input query from a data corpus; mapping the query LAT string to a first type string in a structured resource; mapping the candidate answer string to a second type string in the structured resource; and determining if the first type string and the second type string are disjointed; and scoring the candidate answer string based on the determination of the types being disjointed wherein the structured resource includes a semantic database providing ontological content. | 03-29-2012 |
20120078890 | LEXICAL ANSWER TYPE CONFIDENCE ESTIMATION AND APPLICATION - A system, method and computer program product for automatically estimating the confidence of a detected LAT to provide a more accurate overall score for an obtained candidate answer. A confidence “score” or value of each detected LAT is obtained, and the system and method performs combining the confidence score with a degree of match between a LAT and an AnswerType of the candidate answer to provide improved overall score for the candidate answer. | 03-29-2012 |
20120078895 | SOURCE EXPANSION FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL AND INFORMATION EXTRACTION - System, method and computer program product for 1) preparing queries for retrieving related content based on existing data content. For instance, titles of existing documents or entities extracted from documents can be used as queries. 2) Retrieving content from other repositories of unstructured, semi-structured, or structured data. For instance, web pages can be retrieved using existing search engines. 3) Extracting smaller units of text from the retrieved content. For instance, web pages can be split into coherent paragraphs of text. 4) Judging the quality of the smaller units of text and their relatedness to existing data. For instance, paragraphs can be scored using a statistical model based on lexico-syntactic features and topic models. 5) Synthesizing new sources from high-quality related text. For instance, paragraphs that score above a threshold can be concatenated into a new document. | 03-29-2012 |
20120078902 | PROVIDING QUESTION AND ANSWERS WITH DEFERRED TYPE EVALUATION USING TEXT WITH LIMITED STRUCTURE - A system, method and computer program product for conducting questions and answers with deferred type evaluation based on any corpus of data. The method includes processing a query including waiting until a “Type” (i.e. a descriptor) is determined AND a candidate answer is provided. Then, a search is conducted to look (search) for evidence that the candidate answer has the required Lexical Answer Type (e.g., as determined by a matching function that can leverage a parser, a semantic interpreter and/or a simple pattern matcher). Prior to or during candidate answer evaluation, a process is provided for extracting and storing collections of entity-type pairs from semi-structured text documents. During QA processing and candidate answer scoring, a process is implemented to match the query LAT against the lexical type of each provided candidate answer and generate a score judging a degree of match. | 03-29-2012 |
20120084112 | PROVIDING COMMUNITY FOR CUSTOMER QUESTIONS - A system for providing community for customer questions receives a customer question. The customer question may be classified into a classification from a plurality of classifications categorizing whether a question is answerable, needs expert assistance, needs more information, or is not answerable. Based on the classification and one or more incentives, the question may be further routed to an appropriate community. The interactions with a customer in receiving and answering the customer question may be recorded. | 04-05-2012 |
20120323906 | LEXICAL ANSWER TYPE CONFIDENCE ESTIMATION AND APPLICATION - A system, method and computer program product for automatically estimating the confidence of a detected LAT to provide a more accurate overall score for an obtained candidate answer. A confidence “score” or value of each detected LAT is obtained, and the system and method performs combining the confidence score with a degree of match between a LAT and an AnswerType of the candidate answer to provide improved overall score for the candidate answer. | 12-20-2012 |
20120330921 | USING ONTOLOGICAL INFORMATION IN OPEN DOMAIN TYPE COERCION - A computer-implemented system, method and program product generates answers to questions in an input query text string. The method includes determining, by a programmed processor unit, a lexical answer type (LAT) string associated with an input query; automatically obtaining a candidate answer string to the input query from a data corpus; mapping the query LAT string to a first type string in a structured resource; mapping the candidate answer string to a second type string in the structured resource; and determining if the first type string and the second type string are disjointed; and scoring the candidate answer string based on the determination of the types being disjointed wherein the structured resource includes a semantic database providing ontological content. | 12-27-2012 |
20120330934 | PROVIDING QUESTION AND ANSWERS WITH DEFERRED TYPE EVALUATION USING TEXT WITH LIMITED STRUCTURE - A system, method and computer program product for conducting questions and answers with deferred type evaluation based on any corpus of data. The method includes processing a query including waiting until a “Type” (i.e. a descriptor) is determined AND a candidate answer is provided. Then, a search is conducted to look (search) for evidence that the candidate answer has the required Lexical Answer Type (e.g., as determined by a matching function that can leverage a parser, a semantic interpreter and/or a simple pattern matcher). Prior to or during candidate answer evaluation, a process is provided for extracting and storing collections of entity-type pairs from semi-structured text documents. During QA processing and candidate answer scoring, a process is implemented to match the query LAT against the lexical type of each provided candidate answer and generate a score judging a degree of match. | 12-27-2012 |
20130007033 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS - Providing answers to questions based on any corpus of data implements a method that generates a number of candidate passages from the corpus that answer an input query, and finds the correct resulting answer by collecting supporting evidence from the multiple passages. By analyzing all retrieved passages and that passage's metadata in parallel, an output plurality of data structures is generated including candidate answers based upon the analyzing. Then, supporting passage retrieval operations are performed upon the set of candidate answers, and for each candidate answer, the data corpus is traversed to find those passages having candidate answer in addition to query terms. All candidate answers are automatically scored by a plurality of scoring modules, each producing a module score. The modules scores are processed to determine one or more query answers; and, a query response is generated based on the one or more query answers. | 01-03-2013 |
20130013546 | PROVIDING COMMUNITY FOR CUSTOMER QUESTIONS - A system for providing community for customer questions receives a customer question. The customer question may be classified into a classification from a plurality of classifications categorizing whether a question is answerable, needs expert assistance, needs more information, or is not answerable. Based on the classification and one or more incentives, the question may be further routed to an appropriate community. The interactions with a customer in receiving and answering the customer question may be recorded. | 01-10-2013 |
20130017523 | UTILIZING FAILURES IN QUESTION AND ANSWER SYSTEM RESPONSES TO ENHANCE THE ACCURACY OF QUESTION AND ANSWER SYSTEMS - A method of enhancing the accuracy of a question-answer system. Missing information from a corpus of data is identified. The missing information is any information that improves a confidence for a candidate answer to a question. A follow-on inquiry is generated. The follow-on inquiry prompts for the missing information to be provided. The follow-on inquiry is output to an external source. A response to the follow-on inquiry is received from the external source. The response is added to the corpus of data. | 01-17-2013 |
20130017524 | UTILIZING FAILURES IN QUESTION AND ANSWER SYSTEM RESPONSES TO ENHANCE THE ACCURACY OF QUESTION AND ANSWER SYSTEMS - A computerized device for enhancing the accuracy of a question-answer system. The computerized device comprises a question-answer system comprising software for performing a plurality of question answering processes. A receiver receives a question into the question-answer system. A processor that generates a plurality of candidate answers to the question is connected to the question-answer system. The processor determines a confidence score for each of the plurality of candidate answers. The processor evaluates sources of evidence used to generate the plurality of candidate answers. The processor identifies missing information from a corpus of data. The missing information comprises any information that improves a confidence score for a candidate answer. The processor generates at least one follow-on inquiry based on the missing information. A network interface outputs the at least one follow-on inquiry to external sources separate from the question-answer system. | 01-17-2013 |
20130019285 | VALIDATING THAT A USER IS HUMAN - A method of validating that a user is human. A user question is generated using a computerized device. The user question is output to a user. A user response to the user question is received from the user. The user response is validated as having been provided by a human. | 01-17-2013 |
20130019286 | VALIDATING THAT A USER IS HUMAN - A method of validating that a user is human. A user question is generated using a computerized device. The user question is output to a user. A user response to the user question is received from the user. The user response is validated as having been provided by a human. | 01-17-2013 |
20130282363 | LEXICAL ANSWER TYPE CONFIDENCE ESTIMATION AND APPLICATION - A system, method and computer program product for automatically estimating the confidence of a detected LAT to provide a more accurate overall score for an obtained candidate answer. A confidence “score” or value of each detected LAT is obtained, and the system and method performs combining the confidence score with a degree of match between a LAT and an AnswerType of the candidate answer to provide improved overall score for the candidate answer. | 10-24-2013 |
20140046947 | CONTENT REVISION USING QUESTION AND ANSWER GENERATION - A method for question/answer creation for a document is described. The method includes importing a document having a set of questions based on content in the document. The method also includes automatically creating a candidate question from the content in the document. The method also includes automatically generating answers for the set of questions and the candidate question using the content in the document. The method also includes presenting the set of questions, the candidate question, and the answers to a content creator for user verification of accuracy. The method also includes storing a verified set of questions in the document. The verified set of questions includes the candidate question. | 02-13-2014 |
20140120513 | Question and Answer System Providing Indications of Information Gaps - Mechanisms are provided for identifying information gaps in electronic content. These mechanisms receive the electronic content to be analyzed and analyze the electronic content to identify at least one of topics or questions within the electronic content to produce a collection of at least one of topics or questions associated with the electronic content. These mechanisms further compare the collection to the electronic content, and to a corpus of previously analyzed electronic content, to produce a set of information gaps in the electronic content. Moreover, the mechanisms output a notification of the set of information gaps to a user associated with the electronic content. | 05-01-2014 |
20140222822 | CONTENT REVISION USING QUESTION AND ANSWER GENERATION - A method for question/answer creation for a document is described. The method includes importing a document having a set of questions based on content in the document. The method also includes automatically creating a candidate question from the content in the document. The method also includes automatically generating answers for the set of questions and the candidate question using the content in the document. The method also includes presenting the set of questions, the candidate question, and the answers to a content creator for user verification of accuracy. The method also includes storing a verified set of questions in the document. The verified set of questions includes the candidate question. | 08-07-2014 |
20140258286 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS - System and method for providing answers to questions based on any corpus of data implements a method that generates a number of candidate passages from the corpus that answer an input query, and finds the correct resulting answer by collecting supporting evidence from the multiple passages. By analyzing all retrieved passages and that passage's metadata in parallel, an output plurality of data structures is generated including candidate answers based upon the analyzing. Then, supporting passage retrieval operations are performed upon the set of candidate answers, and for each candidate answer, the data corpus is traversed to find those passages having candidate answer in addition to query terms. All candidate answers are automatically scored by a plurality of scoring modules, each producing a module score. The modules scores are processed to determine one or more query answers; and, a query response is generated based on the one or more query answers. | 09-11-2014 |