The Tangent Search Engine: Improved Similarity Metrics and Scalability for Math Formula Search

Understand

With the ever-increasing quantity and variety of data worldwide, the Web has become a rich repository of mathematical formulae.

• This necessitates the creation of robust and scalable systems for Mathematical Information Retrieval, where users search for mathematical information using individual formulae (query-by-expression) or a combination of keywords and formulae.
• Often, the pages that best satisfy users' information needs contain expressions that only approximately match the query formulae.
• For users trying to locate or re-find a specific expression, browse for similar formulae, or who are mathematical non-experts, the similarity of formulae depends more on the relative positions of symbols than on deep mathematical semantics.