The measures precision, recall, fallout and miss as a function of the number of retrieved documents and their mutual interrelations

In this paper, for the first time, we present global curves for the measures precision, recall, fallout and miss in function of the number of retrieved documents. Different curves apply for different retrieved systems, for which we give exact definitions in terms of a retrieval density function: perverse retrieval, perfect retrieval, random retrieval, normal retrieval, hereby extending results of Buckland and Gey and of Egghe in the following sense: mathematically more advanced methods yield a better insight into these curves, more types of retrieval are considered and, very importantly, the theory is developed for the "complete" set of measures: precision, recall, fallout and miss. Next we study the interrelationships between precision, recall, fallout and miss in these different types of retrieval, hereby again extending results of Buckland and Gey (incl. a correction) and of Egghe. In the case of normal retrieval we prove that precision in function of recall and recall in function of miss is a concavely decreasing relationship while recall in function of fallout is a concavely increasing relationship. We also show, by producing examples, that the relationships between fallout and precision, miss and precision and miss and fallout are not always convex or concave. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.