@article{luan-etal-2021-sparse,
title = "Sparse, Dense, and Attentional Representations for Text Retrieval",
author = "Luan, Yi and
Eisenstein, Jacob and
Toutanova, Kristina and
Collins, Michael",
editor = "Roark, Brian and
Nenkova, Ani",
journal = "Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics",
volume = "9",
year = "2021",
address = "Cambridge, MA",
publisher = "MIT Press",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2021.tacl-1.20",
doi = "10.1162/tacl_a_00369",
pages = "329--345",
abstract = "Dual encoders perform retrieval by encoding documents and queries into dense low-dimensional vectors, scoring each document by its inner product with the query. We investigate the capacity of this architecture relative to sparse bag-of-words models and attentional neural networks. Using both theoretical and empirical analysis, we establish connections between the encoding dimension, the margin between gold and lower-ranked documents, and the document length, suggesting limitations in the capacity of fixed-length encodings to support precise retrieval of long documents. Building on these insights, we propose a simple neural model that combines the efficiency of dual encoders with some of the expressiveness of more costly attentional architectures, and explore sparse-dense hybrids to capitalize on the precision of sparse retrieval. These models outperform strong alternatives in large-scale retrieval.",
}
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="luan-etal-2021-sparse">
<titleInfo>
<title>Sparse, Dense, and Attentional Representations for Text Retrieval</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Luan</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jacob</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Eisenstein</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Kristina</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Toutanova</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Michael</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Collins</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2021</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<genre authority="bibutilsgt">journal article</genre>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics</title>
</titleInfo>
<originInfo>
<issuance>continuing</issuance>
<publisher>MIT Press</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Cambridge, MA</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">periodical</genre>
<genre authority="bibutilsgt">academic journal</genre>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Dual encoders perform retrieval by encoding documents and queries into dense low-dimensional vectors, scoring each document by its inner product with the query. We investigate the capacity of this architecture relative to sparse bag-of-words models and attentional neural networks. Using both theoretical and empirical analysis, we establish connections between the encoding dimension, the margin between gold and lower-ranked documents, and the document length, suggesting limitations in the capacity of fixed-length encodings to support precise retrieval of long documents. Building on these insights, we propose a simple neural model that combines the efficiency of dual encoders with some of the expressiveness of more costly attentional architectures, and explore sparse-dense hybrids to capitalize on the precision of sparse retrieval. These models outperform strong alternatives in large-scale retrieval.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">luan-etal-2021-sparse</identifier>
<identifier type="doi">10.1162/tacl_a_00369</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2021.tacl-1.20</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2021</date>
<detail type="volume"><number>9</number></detail>
<extent unit="page">
<start>329</start>
<end>345</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Journal Article
%T Sparse, Dense, and Attentional Representations for Text Retrieval
%A Luan, Yi
%A Eisenstein, Jacob
%A Toutanova, Kristina
%A Collins, Michael
%J Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics
%D 2021
%V 9
%I MIT Press
%C Cambridge, MA
%F luan-etal-2021-sparse
%X Dual encoders perform retrieval by encoding documents and queries into dense low-dimensional vectors, scoring each document by its inner product with the query. We investigate the capacity of this architecture relative to sparse bag-of-words models and attentional neural networks. Using both theoretical and empirical analysis, we establish connections between the encoding dimension, the margin between gold and lower-ranked documents, and the document length, suggesting limitations in the capacity of fixed-length encodings to support precise retrieval of long documents. Building on these insights, we propose a simple neural model that combines the efficiency of dual encoders with some of the expressiveness of more costly attentional architectures, and explore sparse-dense hybrids to capitalize on the precision of sparse retrieval. These models outperform strong alternatives in large-scale retrieval.
%R 10.1162/tacl_a_00369
%U https://aclanthology.org/2021.tacl-1.20
%U https://doi.org/10.1162/tacl_a_00369
%P 329-345
Markdown (Informal)
[Sparse, Dense, and Attentional Representations for Text Retrieval](https://aclanthology.org/2021.tacl-1.20) (Luan et al., TACL 2021)
ACL