# Package org.apache.lucene.search.similarities

package org.apache.lucene.search.similarities
This package contains the various ranking models that can be used in Lucene. The abstract class `Similarity` serves as the base for ranking functions. For searching, users can employ the models already implemented or create their own by extending one of the classes in this package.

## Table Of Contents

1. Summary of the Ranking Methods
2. Changing the Similarity

## Summary of the Ranking Methods

`BM25Similarity` is an optimized implementation of the successful Okapi BM25 model.

`ClassicSimilarity` is the original Lucene scoring function. It is based on the Vector Space Model. For more information, see `TFIDFSimilarity`.

`SimilarityBase` provides a basic implementation of the Similarity contract and exposes a highly simplified interface, which makes it an ideal starting point for new ranking functions. Lucene ships the following methods built on `SimilarityBase`:

- Amati and Rijsbergen's DFR framework;
- Clinchant and Gaussier's Information-based models for IR;
- The implementation of two language models from Zhai and Lafferty's paper.
- Divergence from independence models as described in "IRRA at TREC 2012" (Dinçer).

Since `SimilarityBase` is not optimized to the same extent as `ClassicSimilarity` and `BM25Similarity`, a difference in performance is to be expected when using the methods listed above. However, optimizations can always be implemented in subclasses; see below.

## Changing Similarity

Chances are the available Similarities are sufficient for all your searching needs. However, in some applications it may be necessary to customize your Similarity implementation. For instance, some applications do not need to distinguish between shorter and longer documents and could set BM25's `b` parameter to `0`.

To change `Similarity`, one must do so for both indexing and searching, and the changes must happen before either of these actions take place. Although in theory there is nothing stopping you from changing mid-stream, it just isn't well-defined what is going to happen.

To make this change, implement your own `Similarity` (likely you'll want to simply subclass `SimilarityBase`), and then register the new class by calling `IndexWriterConfig.setSimilarity(Similarity)` before indexing and `IndexSearcher.setSimilarity(Similarity)` before searching.

### Tuning BM25Similarity

`BM25Similarity` has two parameters that may be tuned:

- `k1`, which calibrates term frequency saturation and must be positive or null. A value of `0` makes term frequency completely ignored, making documents scored only based on the value of the `IDF` of the matched terms. Higher values of `k1` increase the impact of term frequency on the final score. Default value is `1.2`.
- `b`, which controls how much document length should normalize term frequency values and must be in `[0, 1]`. A value of `0` disables length normalization completely. Default value is `0.75`.

### Extending SimilarityBase

The easiest way to quickly implement a new ranking method is to extend `SimilarityBase`, which provides basic implementations for the low level . Subclasses are only required to implement the `SimilarityBase.score(BasicStats, double, double)` and `SimilarityBase.toString()` methods.

Another option is to extend one of the frameworks based on `SimilarityBase`. These Similarities are implemented modularly, e.g. `DFRSimilarity` delegates computation of the three parts of its formula to the classes `BasicModel`, `AfterEffect` and `Normalization`. Instead of subclassing the Similarity, one can simply introduce a new basic model and tell `DFRSimilarity` to use it.

Related Packages
Package
Description
org.apache.lucene.search
Code to search indices.
org.apache.lucene.search.comparators
Comparators, used to compare hits so as to determine their sort order when collecting the top results with `TopFieldCollector`.
org.apache.lucene.search.knn
Classes related to vector search: knn and vector fields.
Class
Description
AfterEffect
This class acts as the base class for the implementations of the first normalization of the informative content in the DFR framework.
AfterEffectB
Model of the information gain based on the ratio of two Bernoulli processes.
AfterEffectL
Model of the information gain based on Laplace's law of succession.
Axiomatic
Axiomatic approaches for IR.
AxiomaticF1EXP
F1EXP is defined as Sum(tf(term_doc_freq)*ln(docLen)*IDF(term)) where IDF(t) = pow((N+1)/df(t), k) N=total num of docs, df=doc freq
AxiomaticF1LOG
F1LOG is defined as Sum(tf(term_doc_freq)*ln(docLen)*IDF(term)) where IDF(t) = ln((N+1)/df(t)) N=total num of docs, df=doc freq
AxiomaticF2EXP
F2EXP is defined as Sum(tfln(term_doc_freq, docLen)*IDF(term)) where IDF(t) = pow((N+1)/df(t), k) N=total num of docs, df=doc freq
AxiomaticF2LOG
F2EXP is defined as Sum(tfln(term_doc_freq, docLen)*IDF(term)) where IDF(t) = ln((N+1)/df(t)) N=total num of docs, df=doc freq
AxiomaticF3EXP
F3EXP is defined as Sum(tf(term_doc_freq)*IDF(term)-gamma(docLen, queryLen)) where IDF(t) = pow((N+1)/df(t), k) N=total num of docs, df=doc freq gamma(docLen, queryLen) = (docLen-queryLen)*queryLen*s/avdl NOTE: the gamma function of this similarity creates negative scores
AxiomaticF3LOG
F3EXP is defined as Sum(tf(term_doc_freq)*IDF(term)-gamma(docLen, queryLen)) where IDF(t) = ln((N+1)/df(t)) N=total num of docs, df=doc freq gamma(docLen, queryLen) = (docLen-queryLen)*queryLen*s/avdl NOTE: the gamma function of this similarity creates negative scores
BasicModel
This class acts as the base class for the specific basic model implementations in the DFR framework.
BasicModelG
Geometric as limiting form of the Bose-Einstein model.
BasicModelIF
An approximation of the I(ne) model.
BasicModelIn
The basic tf-idf model of randomness.
BasicModelIne
Tf-idf model of randomness, based on a mixture of Poisson and inverse document frequency.
BasicStats
Stores all statistics commonly used ranking methods.
BM25Similarity
BM25 Similarity.
BooleanSimilarity
Simple similarity that gives terms a score that is equal to their query boost.
ClassicSimilarity
Expert: Historical scoring implementation.
DFISimilarity
Implements the Divergence from Independence (DFI) model based on Chi-square statistics (i.e., standardized Chi-squared distance from independence in term frequency tf).
DFRSimilarity
Implements the divergence from randomness (DFR) framework introduced in Gianni Amati and Cornelis Joost Van Rijsbergen.
Distribution
The probabilistic distribution used to model term occurrence in information-based models.
DistributionLL
Log-logistic distribution.
DistributionSPL
The smoothed power-law (SPL) distribution for the information-based framework that is described in the original paper.
IBSimilarity
Provides a framework for the family of information-based models, as described in Stéphane Clinchant and Eric Gaussier.
Independence
Computes the measure of divergence from independence for DFI scoring functions.
IndependenceChiSquared
Normalized chi-squared measure of distance from independence
IndependenceSaturated
Saturated measure of distance from independence
IndependenceStandardized
Standardized measure of distance from independence
IndriDirichletSimilarity
Bayesian smoothing using Dirichlet priors as implemented in the Indri Search engine (http://www.lemurproject.org/indri.php).
IndriDirichletSimilarity.IndriCollectionModel
Models `p(w|C)` as the number of occurrences of the term in the collection, divided by the total number of tokens `+ 1`.
Lambda
The lambda (λw) parameter in information-based models.
LambdaDF
Computes lambda as `docFreq+1 / numberOfDocuments+1`.
LambdaTTF
Computes lambda as `totalTermFreq+1 / numberOfDocuments+1`.
LMDirichletSimilarity
Bayesian smoothing using Dirichlet priors.
LMJelinekMercerSimilarity
Language model based on the Jelinek-Mercer smoothing method.
LMSimilarity
Abstract superclass for language modeling Similarities.
LMSimilarity.CollectionModel
A strategy for computing the collection language model.
LMSimilarity.DefaultCollectionModel
Models `p(w|C)` as the number of occurrences of the term in the collection, divided by the total number of tokens `+ 1`.
LMSimilarity.LMStats
Stores the collection distribution of the current term.
MultiSimilarity
Implements the CombSUM method for combining evidence from multiple similarity values described in: Joseph A.
Normalization
This class acts as the base class for the implementations of the term frequency normalization methods in the DFR framework.
Normalization.NoNormalization
Implementation used when there is no normalization.
NormalizationH1
Normalization model that assumes a uniform distribution of the term frequency.
NormalizationH2
Normalization model in which the term frequency is inversely related to the length.
NormalizationH3
Dirichlet Priors normalization
NormalizationZ
Pareto-Zipf Normalization
PerFieldSimilarityWrapper
Provides the ability to use a different `Similarity` for different fields.
RawTFSimilarity
Similarity that returns the raw TF as score.
Similarity
Similarity defines the components of Lucene scoring.
Similarity.SimScorer
Stores the weight for a query across the indexed collection.
SimilarityBase
A subclass of `Similarity` that provides a simplified API for its descendants.
TFIDFSimilarity
Implementation of `Similarity` with the Vector Space Model.