Answer Scoring Based on a Combination of Specificity and Informativity Metrics

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program comprises instructions, which when executed on a processor of a computing device causes the computing device to implement a question answering system for answer scoring based on a combined informativity and specificity score, wherein the computer readable program causes the computing device to:

• generate, by the question answering system executing on the processor of the computing device and configured with a question answering machine learning model, a set of candidate answers for a user-generated input question;
• for each given candidate answer in the set of candidate answers, determine, by an informativity and specificity scorer of the question answering system, a specificity value of each term in the given candidate answer based on a position of the term in a taxonomy data structure and determine a specificity score of the given candidate answer based on the specificity value of the terms in the given candidate answer;
• for each given candidate answer in the set of candidate answers, determine, by the informativity and specificity scorer, an informativity value of each term in the given candidate answer using corpus statistics and determine an informativity score of the given candidate answer based on the informativity value of the terms in the given candidate answer;
• determine, by the question answering system, a confidence score for each candidate answer within the set of candidate answers based on its specificity value and informativity value;
• rank, by the question answering system, the set of candidate answers according to confidence score to form a ranked set of candidate answers;
• and
• return, by the question answering system, the ranked set of candidate answers.

A computing device comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions, which when executed on a processor of a computing device causes the computing device to implement a question answering system for answer scoring based on a combined informativity and specificity score, wherein the instructions cause the processor to:
• generate, by the question answering system executing on the processor of the computing device and configured with a question answering machine learning model, a set of candidate answers for a user-generated input question;
• for each given candidate answer in the set of candidate answers, determine, by an informativity and specificity scorer of the question answering system, a specificity value of each term in the given candidate answer based on a position of the term in a taxonomy data structure and determine a specificity score of the given candidate answer based on the specificity value of the terms in the given candidate answer;
• for each given candidate answer in the set of candidate answers, determine, by the informativity and specificity scorer, an informativity value of each term in the given candidate answer using corpus statistics and determine an informativity score of the given candidate answer based on the informativity value of the terms in the given candidate answer;
• determine, by the question answering system, a confidence score for each candidate answer within the set of candidate answers based on its specificity value and informativity value;
• rank, by the question answering system, the set of candidate answers according to confidence score to form a ranked set of candidate answers;
• and
• return, by the question answering system, the ranked set of candidate answers.