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by tmoertel 4863 days ago
Has anyone deciphered the fat-mustache diagram in the "Query Understanding" circle? It's in the Algorithms section.

At first I thought it was supposed to represent a Gaussian-like probability distribution. But when I clicked on it, the resulting animation showed a series of such distributions getting flattened by some kind of distribution-flattening hydraulic press. The accompanying caption: "Gets to the deeper meaning of the words you type."

If I was confused before, now I was completely lost.

How is deeper meaning represented by distribution flattening? I'd think it would be just the opposite, raising probability mass around the likely meanings, not spreading it out into a uniform distribution over all meanings.

Baffling.

If anyone has figured it out, please do share.

(Maybe I'm taking the diagrams too seriously.)

EDITED TO ADD: New option: If you don't have any clue what it means either, come up with an entertaining yet plausible story that fits the hydraulic-press-vs-mustaches animation and share that story instead.

EDITED TO ADD: Example: At Google’s new eco-friendly data centers, NLP computations are performed by genetically enhanced inchworms. Difficult queries, however, can cause the inchworms to get cricks in their backs. In such cases, Google’s innovative back-massager descends and restores the inchworms to their preferred position (prone), from which they can return to their computations with renewed vigor.

4 comments

You're taking diagrams too seriously.

But the way I interpreted it was, before, the query was short, scrunched up, and slightly ambiguous. The algorithm them lengthened it, representing expanding it to find the deeper meaning.

I was confused for a little bit by that. The way I took it was: "Google removes the wrinkles from your query as to make it processable."
That actually seems to be what Google does to your keyword searches: replace the specific with the general, turn proper names into redundant phrases ("schannel socket" -> "channel socket"), suggest dropping keywords, etc.
I think Query Understanding might trigger the weather, conversion and the other widgets to be displayed at the top of your search results. It's just a guess, since I don't work for Google. (: