A visual analytics approach for what-if analysis of information retrieval systems

We present the innovative visual analytics approach of the VATE system, which eases and makes more effective the experimental evaluation process by introducing the what-if analysis. The what-if analysis is aimed at estimating the possible effects of a modification to an IR system to select the most promising fixes before implementing them, thus saving a considerable amount of effort. VATE builds on an analytical framework which models the behavior of the systems in order to make estimations, and integrates this analytical framework into a visual part which, via proper interaction and animations, receives input and provides feedback to the user.