Patent ID: 6850954

Claim:
An information retrieval support method for presenting candidate words to be input after an input word, comprising the steps of: storing a group of input words, that have been input as a target for a user, as sequences in a sequence database; storing certain words in a hash database made up of keyed hashes based on the stored sequences; acquiring hashes to key appropriate input words from the hash sequence database in response to words input by the user; calculating an index relating to words constituting a hash; arranging the appropriate words in a word directory whose root corresponds to the keyed word in the event that the appropriate words satisfy a specified condition; and a step of outputting the created word directory, wherein the hash words following a word constituting a key within a sequence as hash elements, an index has a posterior probability P (word i |KEY) expressing an appropriate word “word i ” when a key “KEY” is known and a prior probability P(word) i ) expressing before the key is known, and wherein the posterior probability P (word i |KEY)>the prior probability P(word i ).