How Well Can Passage Meaning be Derived without Using Word Order?
A Comparison of Latent Semantic Analysis and Humans

Thomas K. Landauer, Darrell Laham, Bob Rehder, and M. E. Schreiner
Department of Psychology & Institute of Cognitive Science
University of Colorado, Boulder
Boulder, CO 803090345
{landauer, dlaham, rehder, missy}@psych.colorado.edu

Abstract
How much of the meaning of a naturally occurring English
passage is derivable from its combination of words without
considering their order? An exploratory approach to this
question was provided by asking humans to judge the
quality and quantity of knowledge conveyed by short
student essays on scientific topics and comparing the inter
rater reliability and predictive accuracy of their estimates
with the performance of a corpusbased statistical model
that takes no account of word order within an essay. There
was surprisingly little difference between the human judges
and the model.


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