[Dbworld] New book on Information Retrieval

A new book by C. J. (Keith) van Rijsbergen on Information Retrieval is 
available: 

The Geometry of Information Retrieval 
C. J. van Rijsbergen 
Cambridge University Press, July 2004 
162 pages 20 figures 
Hardback 
ISBN: 0521838053 

http://titles.cambridge.org/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521838053 

Information retrieval, IR, the science of extracting information from any 
potential source, can be viewed in a number of ways: logical, probabilistic and 
vector space models are some of the most important. In this book, the author, 
one of the leading researchers in the area, shows how these views can be 
reforged in the same framework used to formulate the general principles of 
quantum mechanics. All the usual quantum-mechanical notions have their 
IR-theoretic analogues, and the standard results can be applied to address 
problems in IR, such as pseudo-relevance feedback, relevance feedback and 
ostensive retrieval. The relation with quantum computing is also examined. To 
keep the book self-contained appendices with background material on physics and 
mathematics are included. Each chapter ends with bibliographic remarks that 
point to further reading. This is an important, ground-breaking bo
 ok, with much new material, for all those working in IR, AI and natural 
language processi!
 ng. 

Contents 

Preface; Prologue; 1. Introduction; 2. On sets and kinds in IR; 3. Vector and 
Hilbert spaces; 4. Linear transformations, operators and matrices; 5. 
Conditional logic in IR; 6. The geometry of IR; Appendix I. Linear algebra; 
Appendix II. Quantum mechanics; Appendix III. Probability; Bibliography; Index. 
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