The Modern Algebra of Information Retrieval

Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back. (Pál Erd s) Information retrieval (IR) is concerned with finding and returning information stored in computers that is relevant to a user’s needs (materialized in a - quest or query). With the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web (Web for short), IR has acquired tremendous practical impact as well as theoretical importance. The number of IR books that have appeared in the last ten years is 70% of the total number (approximately 30) published on the subject in all thus far. This is a clear sign that interest in learning, teaching, researching, and applying IR methods and theory has grown and is increasing rapidly (most probably owing to the Internet and the World Wide Web, which are “- vading” practically every aspect of human activity and life). Most of the books published thus far are concerned with describing IR methods and theories, and they range from classical texts (Hays 1966, Salton 1971, van Rijsbergen 1979, Salton and McGill 1983, Korfhage 1997, Kowalski 1997, Baeza-Yates and Ribeiro-Neto 1999) to ones that are based on linear algebra (Berry and Browne 1999, Langville and Meyer 2006), concept lattice (Koester 2006b), geometry (e.g., van Rijsbergen 2004, Widdows 2004), user modeling and context (Belew 2000, Spink and Cole 2005, Ingwersen and Järvelin 2005), natural language processing (Tait 2005), algorithms (Grossman and Frieder 2004), logic (Crestani et al.