giving searches negative weights

[John Iodice]

The WDK's help text for query weight is:

Optionally give this search a "weight" (for example 10, 200, -50, integer only).
In a search strategy, unions and intersects will sum the weights, giving higher scores to items found in multiple searches

Please forgive me if this is a dumb or settled question, but is it really sometimes useful to set a query weight to a negative number?

I suggest this minor revision. (The second sentence is unchanged, but included for completeness.)

Optionally give this search a "weight". (Use an integer. Examples: 10, 200, 5000)
In a search strategy, unions and intersects will sum the weights, giving higher scores to items found in multiple searches

-- John 

[Steve Fischer]

john, i think it is useful, without thinking too carefully.    it is similar to a set subtract.   having this property alone is better than having it in conjunction with this other property.

steve

--
~~~   ><>   ~~~

[John Iodice]

I wasn't seeing the point. But I guess I do. If you've already set some other query's weight to zero, you could go negative to push this one down even further.

On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 1:28 PM, Brian Brunk <bru...@pcbi.upenn.edu> wrote:

Right, I agree ... at the very least it provides more flexibility for the user.  Is there a problem with having negative numbers?

-Brian

_______________________________________________
ApiDB mailing list
Ap...@mail.pcbi.upenn.edu
http://mail.pcbi.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/apidb

Brian P. Brunk, Ph.D.

EuPathDB Manager

1403 Blockley Hall

Penn Center For Bioinformatics

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia PA 19104-6021

Tel: 215-573-3118

Fax: 215-573-3111

_______________________________________________
ApiDB mailing list
Ap...@mail.pcbi.upenn.edu
http://mail.pcbi.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/apidb