Patent Document ID: 9348900
Application ID: 14102671

Base Claim:
1. A method, in a data processing system comprising a processor and a memory, for generating an answer to an input question, the method comprising: receiving, in the data processing system, an input question; routing, by the data processing system, the input question to a plurality of Question and Answer (QA) system pipelines; receiving, by the data processing system, results of processing the input question from each QA system pipeline in the plurality of QA system pipelines, wherein the results comprise one or more candidate answers to the input question and associated confidence scores; adjusting, by the data processing system, for each QA system pipeline, the confidence scores of the one or more candidate answers associated with the QA system pipeline based on one or more weighting factors; and generating, by the data processing system, the answer to the input question based on the adjusted confidence scores of the one or more candidate answers for each QA system pipeline.

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Claim 10:
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein routing the input question to the plurality of QA system pipelines comprises: analyzing, by the data processing system, the input question to identify at least one feature of the input question; performing, by the data processing system, clustering of the input question with previously generated clusters of questions based on the at least one feature of the input question; identifying, by the data processing system, based on results of the clustering, a plurality of matching clusters, of the previously generated clusters, with which the input question is associated; and identifying, by the data processing system, a QA system pipeline associated with each matching cluster in the plurality of matching clusters.