As stated in the title, how to distinguish these four concepts in machine learning, especially in text related tasks?

For example, in query based tasks, like information retrieval, query oriented automatic summarization, we often use the concept of relevance to match the performance of the algorithms. Then, dig a little bit further, among the results, under certain setting or measures proposed by the authors, if one result bears more importance, then this result is sure to be relevant, and even statistical significance. Then what are the differences between them?

Also, when design or learning features, we want to learn salient features. Here, does saliency means importance or siginificane or relevance. Since my mothertone is not English, these concepts always confuse me when I read papers. Is there a guidance out there telling under what circumstance should which word to be used?

asked Mar 18 '13 at 22:12

Zhibo%20Xiao's gravatar image

Zhibo Xiao
26571213


One Answer:

In my experience,

  • relevance is used in IR, where the goal is to look for documents (or items, or whatever) that are relevant to a user's need/query;
  • significance is used in the context of statistical tests, with the usual meaning of "improbable to have occurred by chance";
  • salient is mostly said of features, as it means "worthy of note; prominent" (Wiktionary);
  • importance may be a technical term in some contexts, but I can't imagine one at the moment.

answered Mar 25 '13 at 09:25

larsmans's gravatar image

larsmans
67651424

Your answer
toggle preview

powered by OSQA

User submitted content is under Creative Commons: Attribution - Share Alike; Other things copyright (C) 2010, MetaOptimize LLC.