Extending Rank-Biased Overlap (RBO) to Relevance Profiles

Bachelor Thesis (2025)
Author(s)

T.H.J. Houben (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Contributor(s)

E.A. Markatou – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Cyber Security)

Julián Urbano – Mentor (TU Delft - Multimedia Computing)

Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
More Info
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Publication Year
2025
Language
English
Graduation Date
24-06-2025
Awarding Institution
Delft University of Technology
Project
['CSE3000 Research Project']
Programme
['Computer Science and Engineering']
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
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Abstract

Rank-Biased Overlap (RBO) is a widely used metric for comparing ranked lists, due to its ability to handle incomplete and non-conjoint rankings while emphasizing top-ranked items. However, traditional RBO only considers the identity of ranked items, ignoring any associated relevance values. In many real-world applications, different systems may retrieve non-overlapping documents with similar informational value. This paper proposes an extension of RBO that incorporates graded relevance scores, enabling the comparison of rankings based on the information they convey rather than shared items alone.

Two relevance-aware variants for redefining RBO are proposed using cumulative gain.
These variants are evaluated and analyzed using TREC ad hoc and simulated data, comparing them with each other and against standard RBO. The results demonstrate that the new RBO variants provide a more informative similarity measure when comparing rankings with differing identities but similar relevance patterns.

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