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Welcome to The FS-1037C Search Engine

Quick Search

To do a quick search, simply type a word into the "phrase to search for" box and hit "return". The engine will search for all occurences of that word within the 5800+ definitions of FS-1037C and display a sorted list with the best matches listed first. The search will take approxiamtely 6-12 seconds.
You may type several words on the same line, each separated by a space. The engine will perform an "and/or" search on all of the words. That means that highest priority will be assigned to those definitions that contain the most occurences of the words, but all occurences of any word will be displayed. The search will take approximately 6-12 seconds per word you type.
Phrases can be searched for by enclosing the phrase in double quotation marks (for example, "command and control"). Quoted phrases are treated exactly like words.
The search process is not case sensitive.
The search process will ignore the words "and" and "or" unless they are inside quotation marks.

Are You a Good Hit, or a Bad Hit?

How does the search engine determine the best matches?

The engine uses a series of weighting factors to analyze each definition to determine which most closely fit what you are asking for.
A large weighting factor is applied if one of your search word(s) appear in the title of the definition. An even larger factor is applied if your word is the entire title of the definition or your word appears as a whole word (as opposed to the word "radio" in the word "radionavigation").
A smaller factor is applied if your word(s) appear within the text of the definition. Additional weighting is applied if your word appears as a whole word. Weighting factors are only applied for the first few occurences of each word.
When a word appears in a definition, the weighting factor is multiplied by another factor that represents how early in the definition the word occurs.
For multiple search words, a weighting factor is added when more than one of your words appears in the same definition. The more times each one appears, the larger the factor becomes.
When crafting definitions for any glossary or dictionary, the writers should always be careful not to build recursive definitions. For example, when defining the word "red", the writers should avoid using the word "red" within the definition. Necessarily, when any search engine looks for occurences of the word "red" in such a glossary, the definition of the term "red" will return a low number of matches for the word "red." In the definition for "red barn", however, the word "red" may be used several times.

Some Examples

Search Phrase:
```
fcc
```
This search returns 10 definitions that contain the word "fcc". Notice that it found all occurences of the word "FCC" as well as "fcc". The definition for FCC is listed first, while the definition for "Federal Communications Commission is listed last. That is because we searched for "fcc", which appears in the title of "FCC", but, in "Federal Communications Commission", the word "fcc" only appears once, at the end of the definition.
Search Phrase:
```
radio
```
This search returns 397 definitions that contain the word "radio." The best matches all contain the search word in their title. Notice that the actual definition "radio" did not appear at the top of the list (although it did appear in the top 15). That is due to the definition of "radio" not using the word "radio" as often as some other definitions.
Search Phrase:
```
radio and noise
```
This search yielded more than 559 matches, with 397 attributed to "radio" and 176 attributed to "noise". The word "and" in the search phrase was ignored. Fourteen entries contained both words. The top matches were "radio" and "noise", since each appears as the complete title of a definition. Also, notice that the term "galactic radio noise", which contained both words, as whole words, in the title, appears high on the list.
Search Phrase:
```
"channel noise" radio
```
This search yielded 401 defintions. Note that the definition for "galatic radio noise" appeared much farther down the list than in the previous example, since now only one of the search phrases appears in the title.
Search Phrase:
```
"command and control"
```
This search yielded 16 defintions, representing occurences of the entire phrase.
Search Phrase:
```
command and control
```
This search yielded 503 defintions, representing definitions that contained either of the two search words (ignoring the word "and").
Search Phrase:
```
"command" "and" "control"
```
This search yielded 2760 defintions, representing definitions that contained any of the 3 search words. Most of those matches came from the commonly used word "and". But, in all 3 of these sample searches dealing with command and control, the same few definitions, appear near the top of each list.

To Exit the Search Engine

To exit the search engine and return to the main glossary, click on the word "main" in the bottom frame and then click on the phrase "FS-1037C" from the main windows when it replaces this box.