[Snowball-discuss] Testing a stemmer

[Martin Porter]

This seems to be a very general question, as it raises the whole issue of
stemmer evaluation! But the simplest test is to arrange for two column
output (http://snowball.tartarus.org/algorithms/german/diffs.txt etc)and
inspect it by hand.

It can be useful to work with a similar list, sorted from the end of the
word (a reverse index). Lovins mentions using these two lists in her early
paper.

Martin

>Dear Snowball people,
>
>What would be the simplest way of testing a self-made stemmer on a word
>list. That is, is there a some kind of testing program?
>
>Thank you,
>
>Anna Tordai