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Semantic Distance Measures
Author(s) -
Cooper Martin C.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
computational intelligence
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.353
H-Index - 52
eISSN - 1467-8640
pISSN - 0824-7935
DOI - 10.1111/0824-7935.00106
Subject(s) - computer science , meaning (existential) , measure (data warehouse) , semantic similarity , function (biology) , natural language processing , word (group theory) , artificial intelligence , information retrieval , scale (ratio) , cover (algebra) , linguistics , data mining , psychology , engineering , physics , quantum mechanics , mechanical engineering , philosophy , evolutionary biology , biology , psychotherapist
The measurement of information is potentially as important to an information engineer as the measurement of physical quantities is to a civil or mechanical engineer. This article introduces semantic measures, representing the distance between the meanings of two messages. We demonstrate one possible application by giving a small‐scale example in which a semantic measure was used to retrieve information by meaning rather than by word‐occurrence. The distance function between the meanings of two messages can be generalized to cover fuzzy meanings. A possible application, the processing of free responses to opinion polls, is described.