Text Information Access Modes
By: Abhishek Salian
Tags: Machine Learning, Text Mining, Recommendation System, Data Science, Information

Text Information Access Modes

In this article, I will be discussing various text information access modes (Push vs Pull & Querying vs Browsing)

In one of my articles, I had discussed the text data based retrieval systems and database retrieval systems (link). Now its time to discuss what are various modes to access text information. We all have come across certain software applications or used certain software applications in which we either input certain text to get something or the system prompts (recommends) you certain information about something (like some products). Let us take one simple example of the Amazon website. When we want to buy certain items or items from amazon we simply input the query and we get some items related to our query. Have you ever noticed that after you buy something amazon often recommends you buy other kinds of stuff related to your bought item? Take another example of Netflix, this website also often recommends you movies or series depending on your taste of watch.

Now let us come to catch from the above examples, some systems pull information from us some push information to us.

So there are two modes to access information one is Pull and other one is Push

Now let me talk more about Push vs Pull

Push and Pull of information is w.r.t a system

Pull Mode

One of the simple example to see this mode of text data access is Search Engine. A user will always input the text or a query to the system and the system will try to find relevant media in context with a given search. So we can say that users take initiative in this mode. Also, the system wants us to input certain information for further steps i.e Ad hoc information is needed for this mode of text access. The below figure is an example of this mode of accessing information.

Example of querying word “computer” in amazon

Pull mode has two types Querying and Browsing

I will discuss querying and browsing after push mode.

Push Mode

In this mode, the system takes initiative to give us the information or rather recommend us certain information for e.g recommender systems of Amazon, Flipkart, Netflix, etc. In this mode, the system has good knowledge about the user’s need for their interest, and accordingly, the filtering is done to push the information to you. Stable information is a need in this mode, unlike pull mode where ad hoc information is required. The below figure is an example of this mode of accessing information.

Example of Amazon’s recommendation system (Source)

Let’s discuss more about querying and browsing.

Querying vs browsing

Let me explain the difference between both of these using a simple example. Consider you reside in some place ‘A’ and you want to go to a place ‘C’. Now if you know the path from ‘A’ to ‘C’ you will follow that definite path. But what if you don’t know that place ‘C’ but you know about a place ‘B’ which is nearby the place ‘C’ so you will go till place ‘B’ and then ask any person to guide you to the path to ‘C’ and then you will proceed. I know we can simply type the place name in google maps and will get the route 😂 but I am neglecting that fact here. So did you observe something in two approaches, so let me tell you that when you are definite about the path you can simply get to that place, this is analogous to Querying and when don’t have a definite path you take intermediary steps which is analogous to Browsing.

Let’s go for some formal definition.

Querying

In querying users enter a query or keyword and system return relevant documents. Querying is only possible when users are well aware of what query to use to get information. We can also understand this by simple SQL query which returns relevant information upon a query statement.

Browsing

In browsing, the user navigates through certain relevant documents or information by certain paths. We do browsing when we want to explore certain topics or sometimes we do browsing when we don’t know the exact keyword or query to use. To be able to get exact documents or media we need to do exact queries in a vast space of information (Internet) we need a topical map to tour the information space which is not well defined or well structured as of now.

I hope you are now able to distinguish between query and browsing and push and push modes.

Thank you!

References

[1] C. Zhai and S. Massung, Text Data Management and Analysis: A Practical Introduction to Information Retrieval and Text Mining, ACM Book Series, Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2016.