ISR-9
August, 1965

IV-1

IV, SPECIFICATION INPUT TO THE REVISED SMART SYSTEM
Michael Lesk

"Cheshire-Puss," she began, rather timidly ... "Wouldyou tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?M"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,"said the cat*
"I don?t much care where ~ " said Alice.
"Then it doesn?t matter which way you go."Alice in Wonderland, Ch. 6

1.

Introduction
The revised SMART system contains a wide variety of processing

methods offering great flexibility in retrieval schemes to theprospective user.

The selection of the individual schemes to be usedin any given run is determined by the programmer through a set of specifications submitted at the beginning of the data cards for a SMART run.
These cards are interpreted by the program SETFLX and used to set up atable of common locations; these are used to tell the SMART system which
methods are to be used, which weights are to be attached to their results,
and what output is to be printed.
In general, three classes of parameters are used. Some parameters
are flow-control parameters; these decide which processing methods are usedin the given run0

Other parameters set weights and cutoffs needed by theprocessing programs. Finally, another set of parameters controls mechanical functions such as printing.

IV-2

In Part 2, the individual parameters are presented with their
meanings and spellings. In Part 3, the program that reads theparameter cards is explained.

2.

Parameter Names Recognized by the SMART SystemA.

Parameters Which Affect the Flow of Control

Parameter
NameValue
STATPR

Meaning

Initial Value

Statistical phrases are found during
the lookup of English-language inputOFFCLUSPR

Clustered phrases are found during lookupOFFSYNTAX

Syntactic phrases are found during lookup

OFFCONCON

Concept-concept correlation is performed
and iterated n times®

OFF

Document-document correlation is performed
and used to expand answers to requests

OFFHierarchical expansion is performed. Valueis either EXPAND or SHRINK, indicating
respectively expansion or replacement ofvectors being changed.

OFFSCORES

An evaluation is performed.

OFFAUTHOR

The author's name is used for retrieval
purposes.

DOCDOGHIERJOURNLCITES

Not Yet Implemented(NYI)The journal in which the document appears
is used for retrieval purposes.

NYI

The citations in the bibliography of thedocument are used for retrieval purposes.

NYIIV-3

B*

Parameters which Set Weights, Cutoffs, etc.

STEMWTw

Weight assigned to concepts derived
from word stems via thesaurus lookup.

1.0

STATWTw

Weight assigned to concepts fromstatistical phrases.

0.0

SYNWT

w

Weight assigned to concepts fromsyntactic phrases (criterion trees)

0.0

CLSWT

w

Weight assigned to concepts fromclustering procedures.

0.0

BODIWTw

Weight assigned to concepts coming frombody of text.

1.0

TITIWTw

Weight assigned to concept coming fromtitle of texto

1.0ROOTWTw

In a hierarchy expansion, weight assigned
to parent nodes (stems)•

0.0

BRANWTwIn an hierarchy expansion, weight assigned
to brother nodes.

0.0

LEAPWTwIn a hierarchy expansion, weight assigned
to sons of nodeso

0.0

CROSWTwIn a hierarchy expansion, weight assigned
to cross-references.

0.0

EXPANDv

Specifies expansions to take place;controls C0NC0N9 HIER expansion methods.
Possible values are REQS (expand requestsonly), DOCS (expand documents only), ALL(expand everything).

REQS

Weight all concepts with a weight of 1,
regardless of source•

OFFLOGVEC
CUTRD

cCutoff for request-document correlation.

0.35

CUTDD

c

Cutoff for document-document correlation.

0.^0

iv-u
CUTCC
CUTC2MODEM)

Cutoff for concept-concept correlation,
first iteration.

0.60

Cutoff for concept-concept correlation,
second and later iterations.

0.60

Mode of request-document correlation*
May be CCS or 0V1AP.

COS

MODEDD

V

Mode of document-document correlation*

COS

MODECG

VMode of concept-concept correlation, firstiteration.

COS

Mode of concept-concept correlation, after
first iteration.

COS

Read documents from a document collection
tape which has been mounted on A6.

OFF

Weight assigned to concepts from author1s
name.

NYI

M0DEC2V

DOCTAPAUTHWTw

JOURWTw

Weight assigned to journal.

Nil

GITEWTw

Weight assigned to citation.

NYI

C. Parameters Controlling Mechanical Functions
klAssign the SM&RT logical tape function Al
to FORTRAN logical tape number n, corresponding to a physical tape unit asdetermined by (IOU). Al is the FORTRAN
monitor system tape.

1A2nSame for A2 - system input tape.

5A3nSame for A3 - system print tape

6BUn

Same for B4 - system punch tape.

7..,A8B l , . - • • .B3 jBo

SMART scratch tapes(For example, to chaige the punch tape toB6, the specification B4 = 16 would beused. This indicates that SMART tape B4
is to be assigned to FORTRAN logical tape
16 which with the Harvard IOU table corresponds to physical real machine tapedrive B6.)

Assigned as in
FORTRAN (IOU)
table

PAGE

Set initial page number to n (ofdoubtful utility).

1

Print answers in format as determinedby v, which may be SHORT, MEDIUM, orLONG.

OFFENGTXT

Print Biglish texts of documents read*OFF

NOTFND

Print words not found in dictionary.

OFFPUNCH

Punch document concept-vectors.

NODEGO

Print node correspondences for syntacticphrase matches.

OFF

Print syntactic analysis for eachsentence analyzed.

OFFPREyCO

Print request-document correlations

NYI

PDOCCO

Print document-document correlations.

NilPCOCOR

Print concept-concept correlations.

NYIPCORDD

Print concordance.

NYIn

ANSWERSYNANA

THESn

Thesaurus used is version n.

1RANNUMn

Initial random-number is n.

timeMAXCONn

Largest concept number is n.

32000

MAXTIMt

Maximum job time is t minutes.

infinity

STOP

End of parameter list.

X

End of parameter list.

3. Description of SETFLXThe parameter list for SETFLX is punched on any number of cards
and in any place on these cards. Names of parameters must be punchedwithout imbedded blanks and separated from other parameter names byIV-6blanks. A numerical or logical value for a parameter must follow theparameter, separated by a blank• Floating point numeric values mustbe punched with a decimal point. The parameter scan will stop if a
STOP or X specification is detected, or before a card with a * incolumn 1. The following is a sample parameter lists
ENGTXTNOTFINDSTATWT

MODERD COS SCORES

1.5

PRNVBCSTATPR

X

This looks up English texts in the dictionary, prints the text andthe words not found, finds the statistical phrases and weights them
1.5> and then evaluates the run using cosine correlation for therequest-document correlation.
The parameter list is read by a two-program system, CALSET
and SETFLX. CALSET initializes all parameter values and sets up atable of parameter names. SETFLX reads and interprets the parametercards, using the table of CALSET. This table consists of two word
items.

The first word of each item is a six-character BCD parameter

name.

The second word is interpreted as follows:
1. If positive, its decrement is a subscript indicating
the common location affected by the parameter. If
the address is nonzero, this location is set tononzero; if the address is zero, the programmer isexpected to provide a number to be read into thislocation.

IV-7

2.

If negative, the program expects a logical value
following the parameter. The decrement of thesecond table word gives the number of possible
values of the logical parameter, and the actual
spelling of the values follow in successive twoword items.

3-If zero, this indicates the end of the parameter
list.

The actual card scans are performed by Smithsonian astrophysicalObservatory subroutines (TSH), REREAD, and (IOH).
CALSET contains a short program to copy the initial value
table into the proper locations and then call SKTFLX. Most ofCALSET, however, is devoted to the tables needed by SETFLX. The
macro-operations MURPHY, DSAPIO, TWEED, and CROKER are used tomake up these tables. DSAPIO PARAM defines a table entry for anu

on-offM parameter named PARAM.

MURPHY PARAM, INIT,(F) defines aparameter PARAM with initial value INIT (if the F is given, infloating point), with a value allowed to be supplied by theprogrammer. TWEED PARAM,(VALI,VAL2,...,VALn),VALk defines aparameter PARAM with possible logical values VALI,... of which
VALk is the initial value. CROKER INIT,(F) defines an initialvalue item INIT (if the F is supplied, in floating point). Aflowchart is appended to detail the SETFLX operations.

IV-8
APPENDIX ASETFLXSTART \ReadCardI

1

Does it Have a *in Colo 1?

>

YES

LogicalJ Backspace
Input TapeNO
Read All Numbers on
Input Card

(THRU)

Read All Alphabetic Dataon Input Card

(PARAM4 Get Next Alphabetic Item_£_
Is it There?
Yes3 it isEntry Number I
Set K * Ith Data
Item in Table

1rPage-2(PageProgram for SETFLX
Flowchart 1NO-^(ERROR)

IV-9Page 2Compare K
With ZeroBK ^ 0<^Is Address of K = 0? ^>YESGet Next
Alphabetic Item
From Input Card

T = Next Input
Numeric Item on
This Card

T = 1

Search Next K Words
of Identifier Tablefor This Item<NO

Is it There?

v yLSet Kth Common^(ERROR)

Location = T
fees, it is
the Ith Entry
Are There More
Alphabetic Items
on This Card?

T - I

K = Data Item ofIth EntryNOSTARTTERROR).

Print-aMessage(^THRu)-(PARAM)

Flowchart 1 (continued)

EXIT^S(PARAM)