1 files changed, 62 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/content/reading/relevant-search.md b/content/reading/relevant-search.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c91b9f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/reading/relevant-search.md
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+---
+categories: ["book review"]
+title: "Relevant Search: With applications for Solr and Elasticsearch"
+date: 2021-05-06
+tags: [book, review, search, programming, algorithm]
+book: "Relevant Search: With applications for Solr and Elasticsearch"
+authors:
+  - Doug Turnbull
+  - John Berryman
+isbn: 9781617292774
+genres: [programming]
+lang: en
+layout: books
+---
+
+## Summary
+### The search relevance problem
+
+Given an increasingly large amount of information, it is infeasible for users
+to retrieve what they needed.  Relevance scoring is therefore essential for
+search engines.
+
+In general, the relevance engineers have to identify the most important
+features describing the content, the user, or the search query, transfer those
+features to the search engine, then measure what's relevant to the search by
+crafting signals and finally balance the weights of the signals to rank the
+results.
+
+Unfortunately, it is a challenging problem.  Each search application
+serves a different type of content and thus has different expectation for
+relevance.  Consequently, there is no silver bullet to solve this problem.
+Even the academic field that thoroughly study this problem, information
+retrieval is not a one-size-fit all solution.  Relevance is strongly tied with
+the field and the application purpose.
+
+### Tackling the problem
+
+The book approaches the problem first by a top-down analysis of how a typical
+search engine works.  It then shows how a search query is processed by the
+search engine.  After providing basic knowledge of how search work, the authors
+give some examples of relevance score tuning and show how it helps improving
+the relevance of the search results.  Not stopping at the technical view, the
+authors also approach the problem from business view: they note that
+interdiscipline collaboration is important in order to define and increase
+relevance.
+
+## Comments
+
+### What I like
+
+The book approaches the problem from various views: business view, algorithmic
+view, and practical view (giving examples). The book accentuates the diversity
+of problems and thereby encouraging readers to critically think of their own
+problems.  While it suggests that search results should be influenced by
+sponsors, it also notes that without balance that will as well lead to failure.
+
+### What I don't like
+
+Its structure is somewhat unclear and flow to me.  I think some chapters can be
+re-ordered so it's more logical.  Also, I find weighing sponsors' priorities
+over customers' unethical, but that is probably just a harsh truth in this
+society rather than the authors' view.