Future Work

Many future directions present themselves. First, the patterns learned from answer passages acquired on the Web can be refined and clustered to derive a hierarchical classification of questions. Second, different question patterns such as “who wrote” and “which author” can be treated as the same in order to cope with data sparseness and further booster the performance.

Additionally, an interesting direction to explore is the generation of pattern transformations that contain the answer extraction patterns. These answer extraction patterns can be learned for different types of answers. Yet another direction would be to provide confidence factor for ranking the likelihood of many candidate answers extracted using an answer pattern.

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Appendix - Test Question Set

Question Answer

With which sport are the Queensberry Rules associated? Boxing

Vienna is the capital of which country? Austria

Who invented the telephone? Alexander Graham Bell

Which sport do the Chicago Bears play? American Football What does the Dewey Decimal System classify? Books

What color is the middle stripe on the Irish flag? White

Who wrote "Jungle Book"? Rudyard Kipling

Around which war is the 1986 film "Platoon" based? Vietnam

What is the largest desert in the world? Sahara

Who wrote "Frankenstein"? Mary Shelley

In which Scottish city would you find Holyrood Palace? Edinburgh Which sign of the zodiac is represented by the Ram? Aries

What is ornithology the study of? Birds

In what sport is the "Fosbury flop" technique used? High Jump What is most expensive property in the board game Monopoly? Mayfair What is the chemical symbol for the element Hydrogen? H

In which American state is Hollywood? California

What is the longest river in the world? Nile

What color are the spots on Mr Blobby? Yellow

Which part of the body would be treated by a chiropodist? Feet Gorgonzola cheese comes from which country? Italy Which sea does the river Thames flow into? North Sea

Which country in the world has the highest population? Chinese In which city is the soap opera "Brookside" set? Liverpool Which European city is nicknamed the "Eternal City"? Rome In which European country would you find the city of Strasbourg? France What color is the circle on the Japanese flag? Red

How old is a quadragenarian? 40

On which London street is Selfridges? Oxford Street

What was Sarah, the Duchess of York's maiden name? Ferguson Which country is San Marino surrounded by? Italy

Which comedian has the nickname "the big yin"? Billy Connolly

What is the national flower of Wales? Daffodil

What is the largest desert in the world? The Sahara

Which ocean surrounds Hawaii? Pacific

What is the highest number on a roulette wheel? 36 From which country does the dish Enchilada originate? Mexico

Who painted "The Haywain"? Constable

Which country was once ruled by Tsars? Russia

What is the only mammal which can fly? The bat

What is the only continent which does not have any reptiles or snakes? Antarctica What is the bestselling book in the world? The Bible From which country does the dish Enchilada come? Mexico

What is a group of geese called? A gaggle

In which European country is the city of Strasbourg? France