I guess Relevance is a useful word to describe it, but I don't think it resonates as well (that is, Joe on the street is much more likely to say "That is important to me" than to say "That is relevant to me".)
If we split hairs, Wikipedia defines relevance as "... how pertinent, connected, or applicable something is to a given matter." Webster has important as "marked by or indicative of significant worth or consequence : valuable in content or relationship" -- I think importance has a stronger connotation than relevance. Under these definitions, I think something can be relevant but still not be important. Certainly everything that is important is also relevant. And certainly all the studies around relevance are important (!) to the discussion, but what I'm getting at is a bit deeper (I think, but I can be dissuaded). I would also agree with Ted here in that I don't think PageRank is necessarily a measure of relevance (the page, after all, is on the given matter or not based on it's keywords, but it is Important because of the fact that everyone else has said so). I also wonder if we aren't clouded by the use of relevance in search terms, particularly in keyword-based approaches. Importance to me factors in many other things (including personalization). Again, maybe I'm splitting hairs. -Grant On Jan 3, 2011, at 2:19 PM, Ted Dunning wrote: > That is close, but I think that there is something else going on with this > as well. > > Is page rank a measure of relevance? Not really (to my mind) > > Relevance has a strong notion of context. What is relevant to me in one > moment may not be relevant the next moment. > > On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Dinesh B Vadhia > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Yep, what I'd call it too - relevance. >> >> >> >> From: Jake Mannix >> Sent: Monday, January 03, 2011 10:48 AM >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: [slightly off topic] Determining Importance >> >> >> I've got one word for you, Grant: >> >> Relevance. >> >> -------------------------- Grant Ingersoll http://www.lucidimagination.com
