Patent Document ID: 9916395
Application ID: 14588910
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method implemented by an information handling system that includes a memory and a processor, the method comprising: selecting a question submitted to a question answering (QA) system; analyzing data pertaining to a plurality of answers generated by the QA system, wherein the analysis results in a stability characteristic pertaining to each of the plurality of answers, and wherein the analyzing comprises: determining one or more key characteristics pertaining to each answer; identifying a set of answers that has changed over time, wherein the set of answers includes one or more answers from the plurality of answers; identifying one or more reasons that the set of answers changed; building an inference chain for each answer included in the set of answers, wherein each inference chain links a characteristic selected from the one or more characteristics, a reason selected from the one or more reasons, and a time period over which the respective answer changed; and storing the inference chains in a corpora of the QA system; adjusting a confidence value associated with each of the answers based on the respective answer's stability characteristic; and providing one or more of the answers to a requestor based on the adjusted confidence values.