<$BlogRSDUrl$> Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
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Thursday, December 11, 2003  

Beyond Simple Search
http://www.intelligententerprise.com/031210/619decision1_1.shtml

As anybody who has used one knows, the text search capability offered by commercial search engines can be frustratingly limited. Instead of getting you to the right information source easily, writes Seth Grimes, "text-search results sometimes seem like the generic wisdom you get randomly from a Magic 8 Ball: They're so lacking in contextual relevance that they may answer many questions other than the one you're asking." Text mining, a much more analytical approach to searching, is poised as a potential solution, promising to structure information in ways that enable decidedly more intelligent search. The basic problem is that human beings and computers think differently. We have a superior ability to understand abstraction, context and linguistic variations, and can detect and apply patterns. But computers beat us every time on speed, volume, consistency and breadth. The challenge is to design information technology that matches human language comprehension while bringing to bear the advantages of automation. New text mining applications tackle that problem through a process of categorization and classification. While the technology is primarily in use by companies and government agencies for very specialized applications right now, Grimes predicts that text mining will become much more mainstream in the near future.

posted by Marcus Zillman | 9:27 AM
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