[SOLVED] X-Distances Operator shows not the most similar document

tiramisusann
tiramisusann New Altair Community Member
edited November 5 in Community Q&A
Hey everybody,

hope, you could help me a second time because after thinking I solved a tricky problem it reveals as not so easy.

I want to compare an Input-Document to the Documents of a Collection to find the most similar document of the collection.
--> Via k-means-clustering I divide the collection-documents into groups, and compare them with the input document to find the most similar cluster (centroid vector)
--> via "join" I extract the documents from the most similar cluster
--> via "Cross Distances" with "only top k" I may find the most similar document of the collection to the input document. (input=req, documents=ref)

First, it all seemed to work, but then I found, that "Cross Distances" does not show the most similar documents, but the documents with the smallest id (which are the first entries in the cluster).

I have no idea why this operator is not working properly. The columns of req and ref are the same (except of the regular ones, which are the vector entries ,and differ for that reason in amount and weight). For the processing of both document collection and input document I use the same inner process.

Hope so much, anyone does have a good idea, because its very urgent to solve this problem for me.  

All the best!!

Note: the "read" operator is the output from the "create document-process documents..."-part ... just for that you see, how I process the input document.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<process version="5.3.013">
 <context>
   <input/>
   <output/>
   <macros/>
 </context>
 <operator activated="true" class="process" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" name="Process">
   <process expanded="true">
     <operator activated="true" class="text:create_document" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Create Document (2)" width="90" x="246" y="345">
       <parameter key="text" value="    CHICAGO, March 16 (Reuters) - U.S. farmers were expected to &#10;plant 91.291 million acres (36.95 million hectares) of corn, &#10;77.193 million acres of soybeans and 57.435 million acres of &#10;wheat, according to a survey by research and brokerage firm &#10;Allendale Inc. &#10;    The U.S. Agriculture Department's latest estimate calls for &#10;predicted corn acreage at 92 million, soybean acreage at 78 &#10;million and wheat acreage at 57 million. &#10; (Reporting by Mark Weinraub; Editing by Marguerita Choy) &#10; ((mark.weinraub@thomsonreuters.com; +1 312 408 8587; Reuters &#10;Messaging: mark.weinraub.@thomsonreuters.com)) &#10;((For help:  Click &quot;Contact Us&quot; in your desk top, click here &#10;[HELP] or call 1-800-738-8377 for Reuters Products and &#10;1-888-463-3383 for Thomson products; For client training: &#10;training.americas@thomsonreuters.com ; +1 646-223-5546)) &#10;Keywords: US CROPS/ACREAGE  &#10;    &#10;"/>
     </operator>
     <operator activated="true" class="text:documents_to_data" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="76" name="Documents to Data (2)" width="90" x="380" y="345">
       <parameter key="text_attribute" value="text"/>
       <parameter key="label_attribute" value="1"/>
     </operator>
     <operator activated="true" class="generate_id" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Generate ID (2)" width="90" x="514" y="345"/>
     <operator activated="true" class="read" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="60" name="Read" width="90" x="45" y="300">
       <parameter key="object_file" value="C:\Users\Susann\Documents\Repository_Ausgang\Input2"/>
       <parameter key="io_object" value="ExampleSet"/>
     </operator>
     <operator activated="true" class="text:process_document_from_data" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="76" name="Process Documents from Data (2)" width="90" x="648" y="345">
       <parameter key="vector_creation" value="Term Frequency"/>
       <parameter key="keep_text" value="true"/>
       <parameter key="select_attributes_and_weights" value="true"/>
       <list key="specify_weights">
         <parameter key="text" value="1.0"/>
       </list>
       <process expanded="true">
         <operator activated="true" class="text:tokenize" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Tokenize (2)" width="90" x="45" y="30"/>
         <operator activated="true" class="text:transform_cases" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Transform Cases (3)" width="90" x="179" y="30"/>
         <operator activated="true" class="text:filter_stopwords_english" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Filter Stopwords (3)" width="90" x="313" y="30"/>
         <operator activated="true" class="text:stem_porter" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Stem (3)" width="90" x="447" y="30"/>
         <operator activated="true" class="text:generate_n_grams_terms" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Generate n-Grams (Terms)" width="90" x="581" y="30">
           <parameter key="max_length" value="3"/>
         </operator>
         <connect from_port="document" to_op="Tokenize (2)" to_port="document"/>
         <connect from_op="Tokenize (2)" from_port="document" to_op="Transform Cases (3)" to_port="document"/>
         <connect from_op="Transform Cases (3)" from_port="document" to_op="Filter Stopwords (3)" to_port="document"/>
         <connect from_op="Filter Stopwords (3)" from_port="document" to_op="Stem (3)" to_port="document"/>
         <connect from_op="Stem (3)" from_port="document" to_op="Generate n-Grams (Terms)" to_port="document"/>
         <connect from_op="Generate n-Grams (Terms)" from_port="document" to_port="document 1"/>
         <portSpacing port="source_document" spacing="0"/>
         <portSpacing port="sink_document 1" spacing="0"/>
         <portSpacing port="sink_document 2" spacing="0"/>
       </process>
     </operator>
     <operator activated="true" class="retrieve" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="60" name="Retrieve Test_Output" width="90" x="45" y="30">
       <parameter key="repository_entry" value="Test_Output"/>
     </operator>
     <operator activated="true" class="sample" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Sample" width="90" x="179" y="30">
       <list key="sample_size_per_class"/>
       <list key="sample_ratio_per_class"/>
       <list key="sample_probability_per_class"/>
     </operator>
     <operator activated="true" class="select_attributes" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Select Attributes" width="90" x="313" y="30">
       <parameter key="attribute_filter_type" value="single"/>
       <parameter key="attribute" value="TREND"/>
       <parameter key="invert_selection" value="true"/>
       <parameter key="include_special_attributes" value="true"/>
     </operator>
     <operator activated="true" class="k_means" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Clustering" width="90" x="447" y="30">
       <parameter key="k" value="10"/>
       <parameter key="measure_types" value="NumericalMeasures"/>
     </operator>
     <operator activated="true" class="apply_model" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Apply Model" width="90" x="179" y="165">
       <list key="application_parameters"/>
     </operator>
     <operator activated="true" class="join" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Join" width="90" x="313" y="165">
       <parameter key="remove_double_attributes" value="false"/>
       <parameter key="use_id_attribute_as_key" value="false"/>
       <list key="key_attributes">
         <parameter key="cluster" value="cluster"/>
       </list>
     </operator>
     <operator activated="true" class="select_attributes" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Select Attributes (2)" width="90" x="447" y="165">
       <parameter key="attribute_filter_type" value="single"/>
       <parameter key="attribute" value="cluster"/>
       <parameter key="invert_selection" value="true"/>
       <parameter key="include_special_attributes" value="true"/>
     </operator>
     <operator activated="true" class="cross_distances" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="94" name="Cross Distances" width="90" x="648" y="165">
       <parameter key="measure_types" value="NumericalMeasures"/>
       <parameter key="numerical_measure" value="CosineSimilarity"/>
       <parameter key="only_top_k" value="true"/>
       <parameter key="k" value="1"/>
     </operator>
     <connect from_op="Create Document (2)" from_port="output" to_op="Documents to Data (2)" to_port="documents 1"/>
     <connect from_op="Documents to Data (2)" from_port="example set" to_op="Generate ID (2)" to_port="example set input"/>
     <connect from_op="Generate ID (2)" from_port="example set output" to_op="Process Documents from Data (2)" to_port="example set"/>
     <connect from_op="Read" from_port="output" to_op="Apply Model" to_port="unlabelled data"/>
     <connect from_op="Process Documents from Data (2)" from_port="example set" to_op="Cross Distances" to_port="request set"/>
     <connect from_op="Retrieve Test_Output" from_port="output" to_op="Sample" to_port="example set input"/>
     <connect from_op="Sample" from_port="example set output" to_op="Select Attributes" to_port="example set input"/>
     <connect from_op="Select Attributes" from_port="example set output" to_op="Clustering" to_port="example set"/>
     <connect from_op="Clustering" from_port="cluster model" to_op="Apply Model" to_port="model"/>
     <connect from_op="Clustering" from_port="clustered set" to_op="Join" to_port="left"/>
     <connect from_op="Apply Model" from_port="labelled data" to_op="Join" to_port="right"/>
     <connect from_op="Join" from_port="join" to_op="Select Attributes (2)" to_port="example set input"/>
     <connect from_op="Select Attributes (2)" from_port="example set output" to_op="Cross Distances" to_port="reference set"/>
     <connect from_op="Cross Distances" from_port="result set" to_port="result 1"/>
     <connect from_op="Cross Distances" from_port="request set" to_port="result 2"/>
     <connect from_op="Cross Distances" from_port="reference set" to_port="result 3"/>
     <portSpacing port="source_input 1" spacing="0"/>
     <portSpacing port="sink_result 1" spacing="0"/>
     <portSpacing port="sink_result 2" spacing="0"/>
     <portSpacing port="sink_result 3" spacing="0"/>
     <portSpacing port="sink_result 4" spacing="0"/>
   </process>
 </operator>
</process>
Tagged:

Answers

  • Hello tiramisusann,

    If I understand correctly, your process uses clustering to find which cluster a test document belongs to then and then uses cross distances to find which of the original cluster members is closest to the test document. The use of Join is a cunning way to filter out all but the cluster members that match the test document.

    As far as cross distances is concerned, you say the input data contains an id attribute. If this is an integer from 1 upwards, it will have the effect of dwarfing the other attributes because I notice these are generated using a term frequency approach so these will be in the range 0 to 1. If you delete the id attribute completely before the cross distance operator, what happens?

    regards

    Andrew
  • tiramisusann
    tiramisusann New Altair Community Member
    Dear Andrew,

    thanks for your quick response.
    I deleted the id attribute from the input document but unfortunately the problem still remains. Then I tried to delete the id attributes from the collection documents too, but the result from the X-distance operator was still the same. It is not showing the most similar document of the cluster (which actually is the "second" one), but the first document.

    Do you have another idea?

  • Hello tiramisusann

    It's very hard to know for certain without the data.

    If you set a breakpoint before the cross distances operator, do the 2 input example sets have exactly the same number of attributes with precisely matching names and types (you said already they did - just double checking).

    regards

    Andrew
  • tiramisusann
    tiramisusann New Altair Community Member
    Hey Andrew,

    well, the input document does have the following attributes:
    role: text ; name: text ; type: text
    role: id ; name: id ; type: integer
    and then the vector entries, which all have the role "regular" and the type "real".

    the document collection does have the following attributes
    role: text ; name: text ; type: text
    role: id ; name: id ; type: integer
    and then the vector entries, which all have the role "regular" and the type "real".

    what indeed is different, is the amount of regular attributes. Because the input document and the document collection are not processed together, they have not the same amount of regular attributes (vector entries). Do you think, that this is the problem actually?

    I added two pictures to show you the output ...
    image
    image
  • Hello tiramisusann,

    That is the problem - you need to make sure the example sets are precisely the same in terms of numbers, names and types of attribute.

    The way to do this is to use the word list feature of the process document operators.

    Here is an example I made - notice the word list being connected from the output of the first process document operator to the input of the second.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
    <process version="5.3.013">
      <context>
        <input/>
        <output/>
        <macros/>
      </context>
      <operator activated="true" class="process" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" name="Process">
        <process expanded="true">
          <operator activated="true" class="text:create_document" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Create Document" width="90" x="45" y="210">
            <parameter key="text" value="First, it all seemed to work, but then I found, that &quot;Cross Distances&quot; does not show the most similar documents, but the documents with the smallest id (which are the first entries in the cluster). &#10;&#10;"/>
            <parameter key="add label" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="label_value" value="d2"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="text:create_document" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Create Document (2)" width="90" x="45" y="300">
            <parameter key="text" value="&#10;&#10;I have no idea why this operator is not working properly. The columns of req and ref are the same (except of the regular ones, which are the vector entries ,and differ for that reason in amount and weight). For the processing of both document collection and input document I use the same inner process. &#10;&#10;"/>
            <parameter key="add label" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="label_value" value="d2"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="text:create_document" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Create Document (3)" width="90" x="45" y="390">
            <parameter key="text" value="&#10;Hope so much, anyone does have a good idea, because its very urgent to solve this problem for me.  &#10;"/>
            <parameter key="add label" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="label_value" value="d4"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="text:create_document" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Create Document (4)" width="90" x="246" y="345">
            <parameter key="text" value="&#10; good idea, because its very urgent &#10;"/>
            <parameter key="add label" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="label_value" value="d6"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="text:create_document" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Create Document (5)" width="90" x="45" y="30">
            <parameter key="text" value="hope, you could help me a second time because after thinking I solved a tricky problem it reveals as not so easy."/>
            <parameter key="add label" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="label_value" value="d0"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="text:create_document" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Create Document (6)" width="90" x="45" y="120">
            <parameter key="text" value="I want to compare an Input-Document to the Documents of a Collection to find the most similar document of the collection. "/>
            <parameter key="add label" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="label_value" value="d1"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="text:create_document" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Create Document (7)" width="90" x="45" y="480">
            <parameter key="text" value="Note: the &quot;read&quot; operator is the output from the &quot;create document-process documents...&quot;-part ... just for that you see, how I process the input document."/>
            <parameter key="add label" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="label_value" value="d5"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="text:process_documents" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="184" name="Process Documents" width="90" x="246" y="30">
            <parameter key="vector_creation" value="Term Frequency"/>
            <process expanded="true">
              <operator activated="true" class="text:tokenize" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="60" name="Tokenize" width="90" x="179" y="75"/>
              <connect from_port="document" to_op="Tokenize" to_port="document"/>
              <connect from_op="Tokenize" from_port="document" to_port="document 1"/>
              <portSpacing port="source_document" spacing="0"/>
              <portSpacing port="sink_document 1" spacing="0"/>
              <portSpacing port="sink_document 2" spacing="0"/>
            </process>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="k_means" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Clustering" width="90" x="380" y="30">
            <parameter key="measure_types" value="NumericalMeasures"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="select_attributes" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Select Attributes" width="90" x="514" y="30">
            <parameter key="attribute_filter_type" value="single"/>
            <parameter key="attribute" value="id"/>
            <parameter key="invert_selection" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="include_special_attributes" value="true"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="text:process_documents" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" height="94" name="Process Documents (2)" width="90" x="380" y="345">
            <parameter key="vector_creation" value="Term Frequency"/>
            <process expanded="true">
              <operator activated="true" class="text:tokenize" compatibility="5.3.001" expanded="true" name="Tokenize (2)"/>
              <connect from_port="document" to_op="Tokenize (2)" to_port="document"/>
              <connect from_op="Tokenize (2)" from_port="document" to_port="document 1"/>
              <portSpacing port="source_document" spacing="0"/>
              <portSpacing port="sink_document 1" spacing="0"/>
              <portSpacing port="sink_document 2" spacing="0"/>
            </process>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="multiply" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="94" name="Multiply" width="90" x="380" y="480"/>
          <operator activated="true" class="apply_model" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Apply Model" width="90" x="514" y="120">
            <list key="application_parameters"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="select_attributes" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Select Attributes (2)" width="90" x="514" y="210">
            <parameter key="attribute_filter_type" value="single"/>
            <parameter key="attribute" value="id"/>
            <parameter key="invert_selection" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="include_special_attributes" value="true"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="join" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Join" width="90" x="648" y="30">
            <parameter key="use_id_attribute_as_key" value="false"/>
            <list key="key_attributes">
              <parameter key="cluster" value="cluster"/>
            </list>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="select_attributes" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Select Attributes (3)" width="90" x="648" y="120">
            <parameter key="attribute_filter_type" value="single"/>
            <parameter key="attribute" value="cluster"/>
            <parameter key="invert_selection" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="include_special_attributes" value="true"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="select_attributes" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Select Attributes (4)" width="90" x="648" y="345">
            <parameter key="attribute_filter_type" value="subset"/>
            <parameter key="attribute" value="cluster"/>
            <parameter key="attributes" value="|cluster|id"/>
            <parameter key="invert_selection" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="include_special_attributes" value="true"/>
          </operator>
          <operator activated="true" class="cross_distances" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="94" name="Cross Distances" width="90" x="782" y="210">
            <parameter key="measure_types" value="NumericalMeasures"/>
            <parameter key="numerical_measure" value="CosineSimilarity"/>
            <parameter key="only_top_k" value="true"/>
            <parameter key="k" value="1"/>
          </operator>
          <connect from_op="Create Document" from_port="output" to_op="Process Documents" to_port="documents 3"/>
          <connect from_op="Create Document (2)" from_port="output" to_op="Process Documents" to_port="documents 4"/>
          <connect from_op="Create Document (3)" from_port="output" to_op="Process Documents" to_port="documents 5"/>
          <connect from_op="Create Document (4)" from_port="output" to_op="Process Documents (2)" to_port="documents 1"/>
          <connect from_op="Create Document (5)" from_port="output" to_op="Process Documents" to_port="documents 1"/>
          <connect from_op="Create Document (6)" from_port="output" to_op="Process Documents" to_port="documents 2"/>
          <connect from_op="Create Document (7)" from_port="output" to_op="Process Documents" to_port="documents 6"/>
          <connect from_op="Process Documents" from_port="example set" to_op="Clustering" to_port="example set"/>
          <connect from_op="Process Documents" from_port="word list" to_op="Process Documents (2)" to_port="word list"/>
          <connect from_op="Clustering" from_port="cluster model" to_op="Apply Model" to_port="model"/>
          <connect from_op="Clustering" from_port="clustered set" to_op="Select Attributes" to_port="example set input"/>
          <connect from_op="Select Attributes" from_port="example set output" to_op="Join" to_port="left"/>
          <connect from_op="Process Documents (2)" from_port="example set" to_op="Multiply" to_port="input"/>
          <connect from_op="Multiply" from_port="output 1" to_op="Apply Model" to_port="unlabelled data"/>
          <connect from_op="Multiply" from_port="output 2" to_op="Select Attributes (4)" to_port="example set input"/>
          <connect from_op="Apply Model" from_port="labelled data" to_op="Select Attributes (2)" to_port="example set input"/>
          <connect from_op="Select Attributes (2)" from_port="example set output" to_op="Join" to_port="right"/>
          <connect from_op="Join" from_port="join" to_op="Select Attributes (3)" to_port="example set input"/>
          <connect from_op="Select Attributes (3)" from_port="example set output" to_op="Cross Distances" to_port="request set"/>
          <connect from_op="Select Attributes (4)" from_port="example set output" to_op="Cross Distances" to_port="reference set"/>
          <connect from_op="Cross Distances" from_port="result set" to_port="result 1"/>
          <connect from_op="Cross Distances" from_port="request set" to_port="result 2"/>
          <connect from_op="Cross Distances" from_port="reference set" to_port="result 3"/>
          <portSpacing port="source_input 1" spacing="0"/>
          <portSpacing port="sink_result 1" spacing="0"/>
          <portSpacing port="sink_result 2" spacing="0"/>
          <portSpacing port="sink_result 3" spacing="0"/>
          <portSpacing port="sink_result 4" spacing="0"/>
        </process>
      </operator>
    </process>

    regards

    Andrew
  • tiramisusann
    tiramisusann New Altair Community Member
    YES! It works!  ;D
    Thank you so much for your help!!

    All the best

    tiramisusann