semi-supervised learning to rank with preference regularization
We propose a semi-supervised learning to rank algorithm. It learns from both labeled data (pairwise preferences or absolute labels) and unlabeled data. The data can consist of multiple groups of items (such as queries), some of which may contain only unlabeled items. We introduce a preference regularizer favoring that similar items are similar in preference to each other. The regularizer captures manifold structure in the data, and we also propose a rank-sensitive version designed for top-heavy retrieval metrics including NDCG and mean average precision. The regularizer is employed in SSLambdaRank, a semi-supervised version of LambdaRank. This algorithm directly optimizes popular retrieval metrics and improves retrieval accuracy over LambdaRank, a state-of-the-art ranker that was used as part of the winner of the Yahoo! Learning to Rank challenge 2010. The algorithm runs in linear time in the number of queries, and can work with huge datasets.
semi-supervised learning to rank regularization lambdarank partially labeled data