Searchplex ID Retrieval terminology registry

Representation

Vector Space Model

Canonical ID https://id.searchplex.net/vector-space-model/

A classical information-retrieval model that represents documents and queries as vectors in a term space and compares them using vector similarity.

Also called

  • VSM

Scope

This ID uses Vector Space Model in the classical IR sense: sparse term-weighted query and document vectors, often using TF-IDF-style weights. It should not be read as a generic label for modern embedding search, vector databases, approximate nearest-neighbor search, or dense vector retrieval merely because those systems also operate over vectors.

Not equivalent to

  • Vector Space Model is not Dense Retrieval. The classical vector space model usually uses sparse term-weighted vectors; dense retrieval uses learned dense representations.
  • Vector Space Model is not Embedding. The vector space model is a retrieval model over term-weighted vectors; an embedding is a learned vector representation that may be used in many retrieval or non-retrieval settings.
  • Vector Space Model is not Vector Search. The vector space model is a classical term-vector retrieval model; vector search is a broad practitioner term often used for retrieval over learned vector embeddings.

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