Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Looking at that, I get the impression that the story is:

- someone introduced the term "inverted file" for this sort of thing (which is sensible terminology)

- later people started considering these things to be a sort of database index

- so they started saying "inverted index" without paying attention to what that implies as an English phrase



I don't think that's the story, again, I think you're overemphasizing a particular kind of book index you're familiar with. Here's usage of 'direct' and 'inverted' index from 1903 that I just googled up

https://books.google.com/books?id=O0AwAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA422&dq=%...


That's an index of deeds, and the distinction there is that "direct" is indexed by the grantor and "inverted" is indexed by grantee.

I don't think that's the same thing at all.


I think it shows quite clearly that your theory that Information Retrieval nerds just got confused/misapplied a particular kind of book index is inaccurate and that IR nerds have been around for longer than one might think.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: