  According to the principle of polyrepresentation, retrieval accuracy may
improve through the combination of multiple and diverse information object
representations about e.g. the context of the user, the information sought, or
the retrieval system. Recently, the principle of polyrepresentation was
mathematically expressed using subjective logic, where the potential
suitability of each representation for improving retrieval performance was
formalised through degrees of belief and uncertainty. No experimental evidence
or practical application has so far validated this model. We extend the work of
Lioma et al. (2010), by providing a practical application and analysis of the
model. We show how to map the abstract notions of belief and uncertainty to
real-life evidence drawn from a retrieval dataset. We also show how to estimate
two different types of polyrepresentation assuming either (a) independence or
(b) dependence between the information objects that are combined. We focus on
the polyrepresentation of different types of context relating to user
information needs (i.e. work task, user background knowledge, ideal answer) and
show that the subjective logic model can predict their optimal combination
prior and independently to the retrieval process.
