Learning to rank [1] is the application of machine learning, typically supervised, semi-supervised or reinforcement learning, in the construction of ranking models for information retrieval systems.
The training data set consists of lists of <query,document> pairs labelled with some partial order specified between items in each list.
This order is typically induced by giving a numerical or ordinal score or a binary judgment (e.g. “relevant” or “not relevant”) for each item.
The ranking model purposes to rank, i.e. producing a permutation of items in new, unseen queries and search results in a similar way to rankings in the training data.
Wikipedia
Learning To Rank in Apache Solr
.../query?q=test&rq={!ltr model=myModel reRankDocs=100}&fl=id,scoreThe query in the example retrieves documents from Apache Solr for the query text “test” and rerank the top 100 (initially ranked by the original Solr score).
The relevance function used for reranking is “myModel” and it corresponds to a custom model uploaded by the user and trained using ad hoc machine learning libraries.
The final top 100 search results returned to the user are ordered according to “myModel”.
To understand better how the Apache Solr Learning To Rank integration works, we have a series of blog posts that describe that in details:
Also, the official Apache Solr reference guide provides many details and uses cases [7]
The importance of online evaluation in Learning To Rank
Online evaluation is used to estimate the best ranking model that fits a specific information retrieval system.
It compares ranking functions through the interpretation of the users behaviour, represented directly by the collected interactions with the systems we are evaluating.
This is called implicit feedback.
Online testing has many advantages, we explore them in The Importance of Online Testing in Learning to Rank – Part 1 .
In this blog post we focus on the interleaving evaluation, specifically on the Team-Draft Interleaving (TDI) approach, a new feature in Solr 8.8 (released the 29th of January 2021).
Interleaving
Interleaving is an online evaluation approach for information retrieval systems that compares ranking functions by mixing their results and interpreting the users’ implicit feedback.
Interleaving is an alternative to AB testing. It avoids the principal source of variance related with the separation of the users in two groups (the one exposed to the control system and the other exposed to the variant) and the consequent combination of the results.
Online Testing for Learning To Rank: Interleaving explores the topic in full details.
Team Draft Interleaving
Team Draft Interleaving considers two ranking models: modelA and modelB.
For a given query, each model creates its ranked list of documents La = (a1,a2,…) and Lb = (b1 , b2 , …).
Then, the algorithm creates a unique ranked list I to return to the user.
This list is created interleaving elements from the two lists La and Lb as described by Chapelle in [4].
The list I is returned to the user, who interacts with the search results of interest. Each result was selected from one of the two ranking models, so we can compute which of the two models takes the higher number of clicks.
Apache Solr implementation
Interleaving in Apache Solr Learning to Rank has been contributed to the Open Source community by Sease [5] with the work of Alessandro Benedetti, Apache Lucene/Solr committer.
Special thanks to Christine Poerschke from Bloomberg that helped a lot in the last phases of the contribution with a thorough review and many insightful observations.
Available from Apache Solr 8.8
It allows running a reranking query, passing two models to interleave.
Current features :
-
- only Team Draft Interleaving is supported (contribution of additional algorithms are welcome)[6]
- interleave two Learning To Rank models
- interleave one Learning to Rank model with the original Solr ranking
- get back the model the search result was picked from
- debug=results returns the score explanation aligned with the model the search result was picked from
- the feature logger transformer returns the appropriate feature values, used by the picked model
Running a Rerank Query Interleaving Two Models
To rerank the results of a query, interleaving two models (myModelA, myModelB) add the rq parameter to your search, passing two models in input, for example:
.../query?q=test&rq={!ltr model=myModelA model=myModelB reRankDocs=100}&fl=id,scoreTo obtain the model that interleaving picked for a search result, computed during reranking, add [interleaving] to the fl parameter, for example:
.../query?q=test&rq={!ltr model=myModelA model=myModelB reRankDocs=100}&fl=id,score,[interleaving]The Solr response will include the model picked for each search result, resembling the output shown here:
{
"responseHeader":{
"status":0,
"QTime":0,
"params":{
"q":"test",
"fl":"id,score,[interleaving]",
"rq":"{!ltr model=myModelA model=myModelB reRankDocs=100}"}},
"response":{"numFound":2,"start":0,"maxScore":1.0005897,"docs":[
{
"id":"GB18030TEST",
"score":1.0005897,
"[interleaving]":"myModelB"},
{
"id":"UTF8TEST",
"score":0.79656565,
"[interleaving]":"myModelA"}]
}}Running a Rerank Query Interleaving a model with the original ranking
When approaching Search Quality Evaluation with interleaving it may be useful to compare a model with the original ranking. To rerank the results of a query, interleaving a model with the original ranking, add the rq parameter to your search, passing the special inbuilt _OriginalRanking_ model identifier as one input and your comparison model as the other model, for example:
.../query?q=test&rq={!ltr model=_OriginalRanking_ model=myModel reRankDocs=100}&fl=id,scoreTo obtain the model that interleaving picked for a search result, computed during reranking, add [interleaving] to the fl parameter, for example:
.../query?q=test&rq={!ltr model=_OriginalRanking_ model=myModel reRankDocs=100}&fl=id,score,[interleaving]The Solr response will include the model picked for each search result, resembling the output shown here:
{
"responseHeader":{
"status":0,
"QTime":0,
"params":{
"q":"test",
"fl":"id,score,[features]",
"rq":"{!ltr model=_OriginalRanking_ model=myModel reRankDocs=100}"}},
"response":{"numFound":2,"start":0,"maxScore":1.0005897,"docs":[
{
"id":"GB18030TEST",
"score":1.0005897,
"[interleaving]":"_OriginalRanking_"},
{
"id":"UTF8TEST",
"score":0.79656565,
"[interleaving]":"myModel"}]
}}How to contribute
Do you want to contribute a new Interleaving Algorithm?
You just need to :
Limitations
-
- [Distributed Search] Sharding is not supported
Shameless plug for our training and services!
Did I mention we do Learning To Rank and Apache Solr Beginner training?
We also provide consulting on these topics, get in touch if you want to bring your search engine to the next level!
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