Patent Document ID: 7877371
Application ID: 11703582

Base Claim:
1. A method for selectively deleting clusters of conceptually-related words from a probabilistic generative model for textual documents, comprising: receiving a current model, which contains terminal nodes representing random variables for words and contains one or more cluster nodes representing clusters of conceptually related words; wherein nodes in the current model are coupled together by weighted links, so that for a cluster node with an incoming link from a node that has fired which causes the cluster node in the current model to fire with a probability proportionate to a weight of the incoming link, an outgoing link from the cluster node to another node causes the other node to fire with a probability proportionate to the weight of the outgoing link; and processing, at a computer system, a given cluster node in the current model for possible deletion by, determining a number of outgoing links from the given cluster node to terminal nodes and/or cluster nodes in the current model; determining that the determined number of outgoing links is less than a minimum value; and deleting the given cluster node from the current model.

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Claim 2:
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the method further comprises: determining a frequency with which the given cluster node is activated; determining that the determined frequency is less than a minimum frequency; and deleting the given cluster node from the current model.