Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical comparison of two measures of school success -- a value-added assessment system and the federally-mandated system of adequate yearly progress (AYP) -- to identify highly effective urban schools in the USA and to explore the predictive relationship between evidence-based decision-making…

Describes an approximate document ranking process that uses a compact array of in-memory, low-precision approximations for document length. Combined with another rule for reducing the memory required by partial similarity accumulators, the approximation heuristic allows the ranking of large document collections using less than one byte of memory…

Proposes a new learning algorithm to improve the retrieval effectiveness of the search system used in the hypertext environment using an extended Boolean model with links to improve the ranking of retrieved items. Highlights include the basic retrieval scheme, the learning scheme, and a review of basic probabilistic retrieval models. (Contains 32…

Computer based information search services, ISS's, of the type that provide on-line literature searches are analyzed from a system's viewpoint using a continuous simulation model. The analysis shows that the observed growth and stagnation of a typical ISS can be explained as a natural consequence of market responses to the service together with a…

Survey results from 183 middle and high schools in Tennessee and 20 business education coordinators were used to build a profile of business education programs in the state. The data prototype can be used by state departments of education to determine the status of business education programs. (Author/JOW)

Proposes split model for index term distribution in document set that uses rank function for high frequency terms and size function for low frequency terms; the point of transition is determined either empirically or by rule. Distributions to describe index term exhaustivity and term co-occurrence are considered briefly. (36 references) (EJS)

The costs of creating and maintaining permanent files and retrieving keyword title indexes in TRIAL (Technique for Retrieving Information from Abstracts of Literature) are presented. This system, which is used for bibliographic control and file efficiency, is relatively easy to learn and use, and popular with school, academic, business, and…

The Hepatitis Knowledge Base (text of prototype information system) was used for modifying and testing "A Navigator of Natural Language Organized (Textual) Data" (ANNOD), a retrieval system which combines probabilistic, linguistic, and empirical means to rank individual paragraphs of full text for similarity to natural language queries…

Defines relationship between user profile and user query in terms of relationship between clusters of documents retrieved by each, and explores the expression of cluster similarity and cluster overlap as linear functions of similarity existing between original pairs of profiles and queries, given the desired retrieval threshold. (23 references)…

Relative effectiveness of indexing using full-text or less than full-text was tested using non-Boolean, chaining type of file structure and searching method. Indexing was done using titles, abstracts, full-text, references, and various combinations; Goffman's indirect method of information retrieval was used to structure and search file.…

Provides detailed model to be used to select most effective method for accomplishing library catalog retrospective conversion. The random sample, gathering information, and steps in project to be costed (searching, verification and editing, coding and input of nonhits, and obtaining final records) are discussed. Examples and eleven references are…

Discusses the results of modeling the performance of searching large text databases via various parallel hardware architectures and search algorithms. The performance under load and the cost of each configuration are compared, and a common search workload used in the modeling is described. (Contains 26 references.) (LRW)

Examines mobile agent coordination and presents TuCSoN, a coordination model for Internet applications based on mobile information agents that uses a tuple centre, a tuple space enhanced with the capability of programming its behavior in response to communication events. Discusses the effectiveness of the TuCSoN model in the contexts of Internet…

Discussion of information retrieval highlights DalText, a prototype information retrieval system that provides access to nonindexed textual data files where the mode of access is determined by the user based on the task at hand. A user study is described that was conducted at Dalhousie University (Nova Scotia) to test DalText. (Contains 23…

Reports on the performance of the vector space model in the presence of OCR (optical character recognition) errors in information retrieval. Highlights include precision and recall, a full-text test collection, smart vector representation, impact of weighting parameters, ranking variability, and the effect of relevance feedback. (Author/LRW)