Patent Document ID: 9165252
Application ID: 14656831

Base Claim:
1. A device, comprising: a question-answer system comprising software for performing question answering processes; a receiver receiving a question into said question-answer system; a processor connected to said question-answer system, said processor: generating candidate answers to said question, determining a confidence score for each of said candidate answers, evaluating sources of evidence used to generate said candidate answers, identifying missing information from a corpus of data, said missing information comprising any information that improves the ability of said question-answer system to understand and evaluate said sources of evidence associated with said candidate answers, said identifying said missing information comprising: evaluating a piece of evidence and producing an evidence score according to a scoring process that reflects a degree to which said piece of evidence supports or refutes said candidate answer, classifying said piece of evidence as marginal evidence if said score is below a threshold value, and evaluating said marginal evidence to identify said missing information, and generating a follow-on inquiry based on said missing information; and a network interface outputting said follow-on inquiry to external sources separate from said question-answer system to obtain responses to said follow-on inquiry and receiving from said external sources a response to said follow-on inquiry, said processor inputting said response into said corpus of data.

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Claim 5:
5. The device according to claim 1 , said processor further: evaluating whether said confidence score for any of said candidate answers is below a confidence threshold value; and if said confidence score is below said confidence threshold value, triggering said step of identifying missing information.