A test of genetic algorithms in relevance feedback

There have been recent applications of genetic algorithms to information retrieval, mostly with respect to relevance feedback. Nevertheless, they are yet to be evaluated in a way that allows them to be compared with each other and with other relevance feedback techniques. We here implement the different genetic algorithms that have been applied in the literature together with some of our own variations, and evaluate them using the residual collection method described by Salton in 1990 for the evaluation of relevance feedback techniques. We compare the results with those of the Ide dec-hi method, which is one of the traditional methods that yields the best results. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.