Module 04 Activity

Scenario

Some of your fifteen questions will not find the passage that answers them. Rewriting is the lever, and it has to be specified rather than assumed.

What you produce

A query-rewriting specification: which of the three problems each failing question has, the rewrite for it, and the case that would show the rewrite made things worse.

Steps

1. Take the questions you predicted would fail. For each, diagnose which of the three problems it has: vocabulary mismatch, an over-broad corpus, or two questions in one.
2. Write a rewrite matched to the diagnosis. Do not expand by default.
3. For the compound ones, write out both halves separately and say how the answer would combine them and attribute each part.
4. Take one question containing an exact condition and separate it into the part that is about meaning and the part that is a filter.
5. Construct one rewrite that would make retrieval worse, and say which of the two mechanisms from Unit 04 it demonstrates.
6. Specify what should happen when a rewritten question finds nothing.

Evidence to hand in

• The diagnosis and rewrite for each failing question.
• The compound questions split, with the attribution rule.
• The exact condition separated from the meaning.
• Your deliberately worse rewrite, with the mechanism named.
• The fallback rule for an empty result.

Review checklist

• Every rewrite has a stated diagnosis behind it.
• Expansion is not the default response.
• Compound questions are split, with a rule for attributing each half.
• The worse rewrite is genuinely worse, and you can say why.
• The fallback keeps the original question rather than refusing outright.

Mark complete