Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Svmaud: Using Textual Information To Predict The Audience Level Of Written Works Using Support Vector Machines, Todd Will

Dissertations

Information retrieval systems should seek to match resources with the reading ability of the individual user; similarly, an author must choose vocabulary and sentence structures appropriate for his or her audience. Traditional readability formulas, including the popular Flesch-Kincaid Reading Age and the Dale-Chall Reading Ease Score, rely on numerical representations of text characteristics, including syllable counts and sentence lengths, to suggest audience level of resources. However, the author’s chosen vocabulary, sentence structure, and even the page formatting can alter the predicted audience level by several levels, especially in the case of digital library resources. For these reasons, the performance of …