Cyborg Categorization Salvation for Search?

Tom Reamy

Information Architect

Charles Schwab

© 2001 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., member NYSE/SIPC. All rights reserved. (0401-6450)

Categorization Explosion

Autonomy Semio Verity Inxight Topical Net Mohomine Simile H5Technologies

GammaSite MetaTagger Applied Semantics Sageware SmartLogik Quiver PurpleYogi Other - Tacit

Categorization: Why Now?

Forrester: Must Search Stink? Browse and Search Need a Taxonomy Problem: Expensive to develop

Taxonomies Buy Search to get Categorization

News Feeds - Corporate Intranets

News Feeds and Content providers– uniform content, size and structure– professional writers– Simple or standard vocabulary

Corporate intranet– Wildly varied content– Mix of good, bad, and ugly writers– Tower of Babel: Acronyms, special meanings

© 2001 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., member NYSE/SIPC. All rights reserved. (0401-6450)

Auto-Categorization: the How

Rules Catalog by Example Statistical Clustering Support Vector Machines Machine Learning World Knowledge

© 2001 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., member NYSE/SIPC. All rights reserved. (0401-6450)

Automatic vs. Humanatic

Humans are better, but not as consistent– General bin, understandable mistakes– Bring outside contexts to the document

Purpose, similar documents, common sense

Computers are faster and cheaper.– Faster yes, Cheaper ?– Cost of poorer quality categorization

Intranet: 20,000 users taking 60 seconds longer = $20,000 a week

© 2001 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., member NYSE/SIPC. All rights reserved. (0401-6450)

The Answer is Cyborg

Integration not Assimilation Human and Computer Integration

– Iterative, distributed work flow, ease of use

Cyborg and Content Management– Categorization and keywords by Subject Matter

Experts

Cyborg and Search– Computers and people learn from each other

Create the Taxonomy

Top Level Taxonomy - 7-12 Categories– Human intensive, Cluster - random creativity

Grow the Taxonomy - 2nd - 3rd Levels– Humans - create rules, select training sets– Computers - Taxonomy Builders, Refine rules or

training sets

Essential Feature– White Box Categorization– Customize algorithm, not just results

© 2001 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., member NYSE/SIPC. All rights reserved. (0401-6450)

Refine the Taxonomy

Initial Phase: Information Architect Effort Suggest

– Provisional Categorization, Meta Data– Automatic Summarization

Support– Distributed Work flow– Visualization of taxonomic relationships

© 2001 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., member NYSE/SIPC. All rights reserved. (0401-6450)

Maintain the Taxonomy

Intranets - ongoing human efforts– Can’t pass on the cost to your customers - they work for

the same company as you

Continue and Improve Refinement– Collaborative Categorization

Features:– Smart Learning categorization– Integration - Content management, Search

© 2001 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., member NYSE/SIPC. All rights reserved. (0401-6450)

Apply the Taxonomy

Integration of Search and Categorization– Browse and Search– Real time clustering, customiztion of results– support collaborative filtering

Integration with Content Management – Integrated Distributed Work Flow– Support Taxonomic Publishing Model

Integration with Expertise & Processes

© 2001 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., member NYSE/SIPC. All rights reserved. (0401-6450)

Lessons Learned

Out of the Box, Out of Your Mind Play well with others Brain surgery is funl World revolves around you Quality counts and size matters Let a Hundred flowers Bloom The End

© 2001 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., member NYSE/SIPC. All rights reserved. (0401-6450)

The END

Really.