We investigate using gradient descent methods for learning ranking functions; we propose a simple probabilistic cost function, and we introduce RankNet, an implementation of these ideas using a neural network to model the underlying ranking function. We present test results on toy data and on data

We consider the problem of combining ranking results from various sources. In the context of the Web, the main applications include building meta-search engines, combining ranking functions, selecting documents based on multiple criteria, and improving search precision through word associations

Fix an algebraically closed field k. Let Mg be the moduli space of curves of genus g over k. The main result of this note is that Mg is irreducible for every k. Of course, whether or not M s is irreducible depends only on the characteristic of k. When the characteristic s o, we can assume that k

is contained in the so-called kernel matrix, a symmetric and positive definite matrix that encodes the relative positions of all points. Specifying this matrix amounts to specifying the geometry of the embedding space and inducing a notion of similarity in the input space---classical model selection

We prove symmetry, and some related properties, of positive solutions of second order elliptic equations. Our methods employ various forms of the maximum principle, and a device of moving parallel planes to a critical position, and then showing that the solution is symmetric about the limiting

boosting algorithm for combining preferences called RankBoost. We also describe an efficient implementation of the algorithm for certain natural cases. We discuss two experiments we carried out to assess the performance of RankBoost. In the first experiment, we used the algorithm to combine different WWW

. The decoding of both codes can be tackled with a practical sum-product algorithm. We prove that these codes are "very good," in that sequences of codes exist which, when optimally decoded, achieve information rates up to the Shannon limit. This result holds not only for the binary-symmetric channel

This paper considers a number of selection schemes commonly used in modern genetic algorithms. Specifically, proportionate reproduction, ranking selection, tournament selection, and Genitor (or «steady state") selection are compared on the basis of solutions to deterministic difference

This paper presents context-group discrimination, a disambiguation algorithm based on clustering. Senses are interpreted as groups (or clusters) of similar contexts of the ambiguous word. Words, contexts, and senses are represented in Word Space, a high-dimensional, real-valued space in which

Certain two dimensional topological field theories can be interpreted as string theory backgrounds in which the usual decoupling of ghosts and matter does not hold. Like ordinary string models, these can sometimes be given space-time interpretations. For instance, three-dimensional Chern