Patent ID: 9690862
Date: 2017-06-27
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. An information handling system that serves as a question and answering (QA) system, the system comprising: one or more processors; a memory coupled to at least one of the processors; a network adapter that connects the information handling system to a computer network; and a set of instructions stored in the memory and executed by at least one of the processors, wherein the set of instructions perform actions of: ingesting a first set of sources into a first corpus; ingesting a second set of sources into a second corpus, wherein the second set of sources are a subset of the first set of sources, and wherein the second set of sources include updates to the first set of sources; receiving a question from a requestor; identifying a plurality of candidate answers to the question using one or more sources included in the first and second corpuses, wherein a weighting is associated with each of the candidate answers; determining whether the first and second corpuses have an overlapping source from which two or more of the candidate answers were identified; in response to determining the overlapping source, assigning a first candidate answer from the overlapping source in the first corpus with a lower weighting than a second candidate answer from the overlapping source in the second corpus; selecting one or more likely answers from the plurality of candidate answers, wherein the selecting is based on the weighting associated with the respective candidate answers; and returning the selected likely answers to the requestor.