AI Glossary

Sparse retrieval

Also called sparse search

What does “Sparse retrieval” mean?

Sparse retrieval: Searching with representations where only some dimensions have nonzero values, often associated with terms.

Sparse retrieval visual guide: Searching with representations where only some dimensions have nonzero values, often associated with terms.
Visual guide Open full size (new tab)

What is an example of “Sparse retrieval”?

A retriever weights a small set of vocabulary terms for each document.

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See also

Vector indexTermApproximate nearest neighborsTermEmbeddingsTermEuclidean distanceTermDense retrievalTerm

Same topic

Hierarchical navigable small worldTermInverted indexTermSpeculative decodingTermQuantizationTermTensor coreTerm