Ferret talk - Jan 2006 - Example on how to boost a field?

I am wondering whether one could boost certain fields (e.g., title and 
keywords) to make them ''weigh'' more against searches across
all fields.

I know that Document::Field has a boost attribute and that it accepts a 
boost argument in the constructor (although I''ve had not much luck with
it, I am just getting back exceptions upon init w/ boost), but I was 
wondering whether the boost parameter could be set on the index or 
search and not at indexing time on the doc field. Moreover, I see that 
the default is set to 1.0 but what''s the max? What are reasonable
values
for the boost parameter. How would boosting up to 1.1 or 10 or 100 
affect the search results?

Thank you in advance for your consideration,

Dado

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Hi Dado,

Could you give an example of your code that is causing exceptions?

If you want to see the effect that a boost has on the results you can
use IndexSearcher#explain(query, doc) to see how the boost effects the
query score. There is no maximum or minimum value for the boost.

Hope that helps,
Dave

On 1/30/06, Edoardo Marcora <marcora at caltech.edu>
wrote:
> I am wondering whether one could boost certain fields (e.g., title and
> keywords) to make them ''weigh'' more against searches
across all fields.
>
> I know that Document::Field has a boost attribute and that it accepts a
> boost argument in the constructor (although I''ve had not much luck
with
> it, I am just getting back exceptions upon init w/ boost), but I was
> wondering whether the boost parameter could be set on the index or
> search and not at indexing time on the doc field. Moreover, I see that
> the default is set to 1.0 but what''s the max? What are reasonable
values
> for the boost parameter. How would boosting up to 1.1 or 10 or 100
> affect the search results?
>
> Thank you in advance for your consideration,
>
> Dado
>
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
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> Ferret-talk mailing list
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