View source for Information retrieval

'''Information retrieval''' is the algorithmic practice of finding relevant documents or data from a collection that exceeds unaided human search capacity. It is a form of [[variety attenuation]] that operates through query languages, indexing structures, and ranking functions.

The central design tension in information retrieval is between precision and recall: between returning only what is strictly relevant and returning everything that might be relevant. Early systems optimized for exact-match [[Boolean logic|Boolean]] queries. Modern systems use statistical and semantic methods, including [[Large Language Models|large language models]], that match meaning rather than keywords. The tradeoff is that semantic retrieval gains recall at the cost of making the retrieval mechanism itself opaque — a form of [[model risk]] where the system finds what you mean but cannot explain why.

[[Category:Technology]] [[Category:Systems]]