Flickr Image: LipJin

by Jeffrey Barrett*
There is a distinction in the text analytics community between “searching” and “discovering.” Search is typically defined as “finding all documents or occurrences of a piece of text you know you want to find from a given set of texts.” Discovery is where “pieces of text are identified or grouped based on statistical occurrences within the given set of texts.”

Often search is considered “precise” when in reality the algorithms behind the tool you are using can vary by type. (Learn more about precision and recall here). The world of discovery tools is almost always considered by the users as something close to artificial intelligence when, for many, they are simply more diverse statistical tools than those used by search.

Most, particularly those in the field of text analytics, will agree that search is the starting path to a manual application of discovery. This is where you “feel” there may be a new aspect to what you’re searching to uncover. So you search for that topic and you use your judgment to see if there is an overlap; you apply a human statistical measure to your observations via search.

For others, search is simply a tool for grouping and organizing with no discovery applied. As we look into the future of our portal product offering, here at BurrellesLuce, we are looking into the transition from search to discovery.

So what discovery techniques do you use in conjunction with search?

*Bio: Currently I am the chief architect of BurrellesLuce 2.0, the portal used by thousands of PR professionals to monitor, share, organize, and measure online and print news. I started as a web developer for Merck & Company and I am an accomplished technologist with a focus on large scale system architecture and implementation. With over ten years of experience designing and deploying technical solutions for a wide range of companies, I most recently managed web projects for NBC Universal, where I delivered social networking applications and supported high traffic applications. Prior to that, I served as director of technology for Silver Carrot, a marketing firm, creating and delivering the technology that powered high-performance online campaigns. In my spare time, I enjoy reading about economics and anything that has to do with modeling social interaction and social media. LinkedIn: Jeffrey Barrett; Twitter: @BurrellesLuce; Facebook: BurrellesLuce

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 10:20 am and is filed under Public Relations, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.