Listwise Learning to Rank Based on Approximate Rank Indicators

Thibaut Thonet; Yagmur Gizem Cinar; Eric Gaussier; Minghan Li; Jean-Michel Renders

AAAI 2022technical8 citations

Listwise Learning to Rank Based on Approximate Rank Indicators

Thibaut Thonet, Yagmur Gizem Cinar, Eric Gaussier, Minghan Li, Jean-Michel Renders

Abstract

We study here a way to approximate information retrieval metrics through a softmax-based approximation of the rank indicator function. Indeed, this latter function is a key component in the design of information retrieval metrics, as well as in the design of the ranking and sorting functions. Obtaining a good approximation for it thus opens the door to differentiable approximations of many evaluation measures that can in turn be used in neural end-to-end approaches. We first prove theoretically that the approximations proposed are of good quality, prior to validate them experimentally on both learning to rank and text-based information retrieval tasks.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{aaai2022_listwiselearning,
  title = {Listwise Learning to Rank Based on Approximate Rank Indicators},
  author = {Thibaut Thonet and Yagmur Gizem Cinar and Eric Gaussier and Minghan Li and Jean-Michel Renders},
  booktitle = {AAAI 2022},
  year = {2022}
}