CPC G06N 5/04 (2013.01) [G06N 20/00 (2019.01)] | 20 Claims |
1. A method, in a data processing system comprising at least one memory and at least one processor, for question answering using time weighted evidence, the method comprising:
configuring the at least one memory with instructions, which are executed by the at least one processor and configure the at least one processor to implement a question answering system;
receiving, by the question answering system, an input question from a user;
receiving, by the question answering system from the user via a user interface, a time focus for the input question and a curve width, wherein the user interface graphically displays a timeline and a function shape and provides a first control to allow the user to move a center of the function shape along the timeline and a second control to allow the user to change the curve width;
defining, by a time weighting component executing within the question answering system, a weighting function, wherein the weighting function is a bell curve having a peak at the received time focus on a time axis and a width based on the received curve width;
decomposing, by a question decomposition component executing within the question answering system, the input question into one or more queries;
applying, by a hypothesis generation component executing within the question answering system, the one or more queries to a corpus of information to obtain a set of hypothesis evidence, wherein each item of information within the hypothesis evidence has an associated time value;
weighting, by the time weighting component, the set of hypothesis evidence based on the associated time values according to the weighting function to form time weighted evidence;
scoring, by a hypothesis and evidence scoring component executing within the question answering system, a plurality of hypotheses for answering the input question based on the time weighted evidence;
ranking, by a final confidence merging and ranking component executing within the question answering system, the plurality of hypotheses to form a ranked set of candidate answers to the input question; and
outputting, by the question answering system, the ranked set of candidate answers to the user.
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