Patent Document ID: 4839853
Application ID: 07244349

Base Claim:
1. An information retrieval method comprising the steps of generating term-by-data object matrix data to represent information files stored in a computer system, said matrix data being indicative of the frequency of occurrence of selected terms contained in the data objects stored in the information files, decomposing said matrix into a reduced singular value representation composed of distinct term and data object files, in response to a user query, generating a pseudo-object utilizing said selected terms and inserting said pseudo-object into said matrix data, and examining the similarity between said pseudo-object and said term and data object files to generate an information response and storing said response in the system in a form accessible by the user.

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Claim 10:
10. The method as recited in claim 1 wherein said matrix database is expressed as Y, said step of decomposing produces said representation in the form Y=T.sub.o S.sub.o D.sup.T.sub.o of rank m, and an approximation representation Y.sub.R =TSD.sup.T of rank k&lt;m, where T.sub.o and D.sub.o represent said term and data object databases and S.sub.o corresponds to said singular value representation and where T, D and S represent reduced forms of T.sub.o, D.sub.o and S.sub.o, respectively, said pseudo-object is expressible as Y.sub.q and said step of inserting includes the step of computing D.sub.q =Y.sub.q.sup.T TS.sup.-1, and said step of examining includes the step of evaluating the cosines between said pseudo-object and said term and document matrices.