Question Answering with Time-Based Weighting

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a computing device, causes the computing device to:

• receive an input question;
• determine a time focus for the input question;
• define a weighting function, wherein the weighting function is a bell curve having a peak at the time focus on a time axis;
• decompose the input question into one or more queries;
• apply the one or more queries to a corpus of information to obtain a set of hypothesis evidence, wherein each item of information within the hypothesis evidence has an associated time value;
• weight the set of hypothesis evidence based on the associated time values according to the weighting function to form time weighted evidence;
• and
• generate hypotheses for answering the input question based on the time weighted evidence.

An apparatus comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
• receive an input question;
• determine a time focus for the input question;
• define a weighting function, wherein the weighting function is a bell curve having a peak at the time focus on a time axis;
• decompose the input question into one or more queries;
• apply the one or more queries to a corpus of information to obtain a set of hypothesis evidence, wherein each item of information within the hypothesis evidence has an associated time value;
• weight the set of hypothesis evidence based on the associated time values according to the weighting function to form time weighted evidence;
• and
• generate hypotheses for answering the input question based on the time weighted evidence.