Developing a Corpus Specific Stop-List Using Quantitative Comparison

<p>We have become overwhelmed with electronic information and it seems our situation is not going to improve. When computers first became thought of as instruments to assist us and make our lives easier we thought of a future that would be a manageable one. We envisioned a day when documents no matter when they were produced would be as close as a click of the mouse and the typing of a few words. Locating information of interest was not going to take all day. What we have found is technology changes faster than we can keep up with it. This thesis will look at how we can provide faster access to the information we are looking for. Previous research in the area of document/information retrieval has mainly focused on the automated creation of abstracts and indexes. But today's requirements are more closely related to searching for information through the use of queries. At the heart of the query process is the removal of search terms with little or no significance to the search being performed. More often than not stop-lists are constructed from the most commonly occurring words in the English language. This approach may be fine for systems which handle information from very broad categories.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p><br>