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reli\mathrm{rel}_i

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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 retrievers across many domains at once — BEIR evaluated ten lexical, sparse, dense, late-interaction and re-ranking systems across eighteen public datasets…

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reli\mathrm{rel}_i

Equation 12 · AI Agents & Systems

Measuring What a RAG System Retrieves, Not Just What It Answers

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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 retrievers across many domains at once — BEIR evaluated ten lexical, sparse, dense, late-interaction and re-ranking systems across eighteen public datasets…

Meanings in this article

  • ii: a position index.
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