Patent ID: 9703860
Date: 2017-07-11
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. A method, in a Question and Answer (QA) system comprising a processor and a memory, for identifying a related previously processed question, the method comprising: processing, by the QA system, a first question to generate an answer to the first question and a supporting evidence passage that supports the answer to the first question being a correct answer to the first question; performing, by the QA system, a lookup operation in a question repository based on an identifier of the supporting evidence passage to identify an entry corresponding to a previously processed question, different than the first question, that previously had an answer generated based on the supporting evidence passage; returning, by the QA system, the previously processed question and the answer to the first question to a submitter of the first question; calculating, by the QA system, an affinity score of the first question, wherein the affinity score represents an affinity between the first question and the supporting evidence passage; and storing the first question and the affinity score in the question repository in association with the supporting evidence passage, wherein calculating the affinity score of the first question comprises: