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Equation 11 · Part 13 · Measuring What a RAG System Retrieves, Not Just What It Answers

Numerator: DCG@k

DCG@k=∑i=1k2 reli−1log⁡2(i+1),nDCG@k=DCG@kIDCG@k\mathrm{DCG@}k = \sum_{i=1}^{k} \frac{2^{\,\mathrm{rel}_i}-1}{\log_2(i+1)}, \qquad \mathrm{nDCG@}k = \frac{\mathrm{DCG@}k}{\mathrm{IDCG@}k}
DCG@k\mathrm{DCG@}k

What this part means

The complete quantity above the fraction bar.

Its job in the formula

DCG@k occurs above the fraction bar. The numerator is divided by the entire denominator below it.

The passage around this formula

Normalised discounted cumulative gain generalises this to graded relevance and to the whole list rather than only the first hit: DCG@k=∑i=1k2 reli−1log⁡2(i+1),nDCG@k=DCG@kIDCG@k\mathrm{DCG@}k = \sum_{i=1}^{k} \frac{2^{\,\mathrm{rel}_i}-1}{\log_2(i+1)}, \qquad \mathrm{nDCG@}k = \frac{\mathrm{DCG@}k}{\mathrm{IDCG@}k}. where reli\mathrm{rel}_i is the graded relevance of the result at position i and IDCG@\mathrm{IDCG@}k is the DCG of the ideal ordering, so the ratio is bounded near one regardless of how many relevant documents exist for a given query. The logarithmic discount encodes a specific judgement about attention: a relevant document at position one is worth far more than the same document at position ten, and nDCG is the standard way the information-retrieval literature makes that judgement quantitative. Heterogeneous retrieval benchmarks built to compare…

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Learn the underlying idea

A fraction a/b means a divided by b. The top number is the numerator; the bottom number is the denominator, and it cannot be zero.

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Sources cited in the surrounding passage

These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.