Strategy-based interactive cluster visualization for information retrieval

In this paper we investigate a general purpose interactive information organization system. The system organizes documents by placing them into 1-, 2-, or 3-dimensional space based on their similarity and a springembedding algorithm. We begin by developing a method for estimating the quality of the organization when it is applied to a set of documents returned in response to a query. We show how the relevant documents tend to clump together in space. We proceed by presenting a method for measuring the amount of structure in the organization and explain how this knowledge can be used to refine the system. We also show that increasing the dimensionality of the organization generally improves its quality, albeit only a small amount. We introduce two methods for modifying the organization based on information obtained from the user and show how such feedback improves the organization. All the analysis is done offline without direct user intervention. © 2000 Springer-Verlag.