David Blair: Difference between revisions

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David C. Blair (1947-2011) was an American information retrieval expert.

Life

'David Clark Blair was born on May 23, 1947 in Salem, Oregon. After living in Taiwan and Pakistan, he received a BA degree from Whitman College, a liberal arts college in Walla Walla, Washington, and then a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1981. At Berkeley studied in the School of Library and Information Studies (later renamed School of Information). His doctoral dissertation, Pragmatic aspects of inquiry, directed by Patrick Wilson, examined the use of language in searches.

Blair became professor of Business Information Technology in the Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan until, after a long illness, he died in May 2011.

Publications

An evaluation of retrieval effectiveness for a full-text document-retrieval system," with M. E. Maron. Communications of the ACM 28, no 3 (March 1985): 289-299. This evaluation of the retrieval performance of the STAIRS system that searched for words in an unedited full-text corpus is regarded as a classic in the information retrieval literature. Users who thought they were finding 70% of relevant documents (i.e., 70% recall) were in fact retrieving only about 20% because of variety in word usage. For example, a search for documents about accidents using the term "accident" would not retrieve a document if the politer term "incident" had been used. [1]
"STAIRS Redux: Thoughts on the STAIRS evaluation, Ten Years After," Journal of the American Society for Information Science 47, no.1 (Blair, 1996): 4-22.
Language and Representation in Information Retrieval. Blair stated that the Philosophy of Language had the best theory for understanding meaning in language, and within the Philosophy of Language, the work of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was found to be most perceptive.
Wittgenstein, language, and information : back to the rough ground! Dordrecht : Springer, 2006. A extension of the discussions in Language and Representation in Information Retrieval.continuation of the

Awards

American Society for Information Science. Best Information Science Book of the Year 1990.

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 == Life ==
-'''David Clark Blair'' was born on May 23, 1947 in Salem, Oregon. After living in Taiwan and Pakistan, he received a BA degree from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington and then a PhD from the University of California Berkeley. At Berkeley studied in the School of Library and Information Studies (later renamed School of Information). His doctoral dissertation,  and died .
+'''David Clark Blair'' was born on May 23, 1947 in Salem, Oregon. After living in Taiwan and Pakistan, he received a BA degree from Whitman College, a liberal arts college in Walla Walla, Washington, and then a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1981. At Berkeley studied in the School of Library and Information Studies (later renamed School of Information). His doctoral dissertation, ''Pragmatic aspects of inquiry'', directed by [[Patrick Wilson]], examined the use of language in searches.
+Blair became professor of Business Information Technology in the Ross School of Business at The
+University of Michigan until, after a long illness, he died in May 2011.
 == Publications ==
+*An evaluation of retrieval effectiveness for a full-text document-retrieval system," with [[Melvin Earl (Bill) Maron|M. E. Maron]]. ''Communications of the ACM'' 28, no 3 (March 1985): 289-299. This evaluation of the retrieval performance of the STAIRS system that searched for words in an unedited full-text corpus is regarded as a classic in the information retrieval literature. Users who thought they were finding 70% of relevant documents (i.e., 70% recall) were in fact retrieving only about 20% because of variety in word usage. For example, a search for documents about ''accidents'' using the term "accident" would not retrieve a document if the politer term "incident" had been used. [https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3166.3197]
+*"STAIRS Redux: Thoughts on the STAIRS evaluation, Ten Years After," ''Journal of the American Society for Information Science'' 47, no.1 (Blair, 1996): 4-22.
 *''Language and Representation in Information Retrieval.'' Blair stated that the Philosophy of Language had the best theory for understanding meaning in language, and within the Philosophy of Language, the work of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was found to be most perceptive.
 *''Wittgenstein, language, and information : back to the rough ground!'' Dordrecht : Springer, 2006. A extension of the discussions in ''Language and Representation in Information Retrieval.''continuation of the
@@ Line 13: / Line 17: @@
 == Further reading ==
-"David Clark Blair." [Obituary] ''Ann Arbor News'' May 15, 2011. [https://obits.mlive.com/obituaries/search?affiliateId=876]
+"David Clark Blair." [Obituary] ''Ann Arbor News'', May 15, 2011. [https://obits.mlive.com/obituaries/search?affiliateId=876]