Assertion (A): When you enter a query into a search engine, it retrieves and…
2025
Assertion (A): When you enter a query into a search engine, it retrieves and presents a list of content relevant to your search. Reason (R): The goal of information retrieval is to effectively and efficiently find and present information that matches the user's search criteria.
- A.
Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation
- B.
Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is NOT the correct explanation
- C.
(A) is true but (R) is false
- D.
(A) is false but (R) is true
Attempted by 31 students.
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Correct answer: A
An Assertion–Reason item is resolved by checking three things in order: whether the Assertion (A) is factually true, whether the Reason (R) is factually true, and — only if both are true — whether R is the correct explanation of A, meaning R's content is literally why A happens, not just an unrelated true fact sitting beside it. Information Retrieval (IR), the computing field referenced here, exists to take a user's query, search a stored index of content, and return the items most relevant to that query — doing so effectively (relevant results) and efficiently (with minimal wasted effort).
Here, (A) describes a search engine taking a query and returning a list of relevant content — this is exactly the observable, everyday behaviour of a search engine, so (A) is true. (R) describes the goal of information retrieval as finding and presenting matching information effectively and efficiently — this is the standard definition of what an IR system is designed to achieve, so (R) is also true. The two are not merely coincidentally true: the retrieval behaviour in (A) is the search engine carrying out the very goal stated in (R), so (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
Judging both statements true but unrelated would require the assertion's behaviour to hold for some reason other than the stated IR goal — but a search engine's retrieve-and-present behaviour has no other purpose here; it is precisely how it pursues that goal, so R does explain A.
Judging R false would require ‘effectively and efficiently finding and presenting matching information’ to NOT be the goal of information retrieval — but that is the field's standard, textbook definition, so R cannot be marked false.
Judging A false would require a search engine to NOT retrieve and present relevant content for a query — but that is the most basic, observable function of any search engine, so A cannot be marked false.
Both (A) and (R) are therefore true, and (R) correctly explains (A) — the assertion is the retrieval behaviour, the reason is retrieval's defining goal, and one is the direct cause of the other.