Email Sorting via N-Gram Entropy and Affinity Scoring
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Solution Overview
Problem
Individuals face challenges in managing and organizing a large volume of emails, leading to a cumbersome and ineffective inbox-based system due to the complexity and overlap of folders, causing them to abandon folder-based organization.
Innovation Solution
An email application is configured to perform an initial training process analyzing emails on an n-gram basis to identify high-value n-grams for each folder, which are then used to sort new emails into appropriate folders or suggest the creation of new folders based on affinity scores.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If manual folder sorting is used to organize emails, then email organization is improved, but the complexity of the folder structure increases over time making it difficult to navigate
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically sorts incoming emails into appropriate folders by analyzing email content against trained folder characteristics, eliminating the need for manual sorting while maintaining organized structure. The email application performs self-organization through automated classification based on n-gram analysis and affinity scores.
Solution Approach 2:
The manual mechanical process of physically sorting emails into folders is replaced by an automated computational system that uses n-gram analysis, entropy calculation, and machine learning to automatically classify and route emails to appropriate folders without user intervention.
2Ease of operation
If folder-based organization is abandoned in favor of a simple inbox, then ease of operation is improved, but the ability to locate specific emails deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system provides self-service automated sorting that maintains the simplicity of a single inbox appearance while automatically organizing emails into structured folders in the background, combining the ease of a simple interface with the organization benefits of folder structure.
Solution Approach 2:
An intermediary automated sorting system is introduced between the simple inbox interface and the organized folder structure, mediating between user simplicity requirements and organization needs by automatically handling the complex sorting logic.
3Device complexity
If built-in search features are used to locate emails, then the need for folder organization is reduced, but the effectiveness of locating emails deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of searching for emails after they are received, the system performs preliminary automated sorting action by analyzing and classifying incoming emails into appropriate folders immediately upon arrival, making emails easily locatable through organized structure rather than requiring effective search.
Data Source
AI summary
The embodiments set forth techniques for sorting emails within an email application. The technique can include: (1) accessing a plurality of emails, where each email is included in a respective folder of one or more folders, (2) establishing a set of n-grams based on the plurality of emails, (3) for each n-gram in the set of n-grams: calculating a respective normalized entropy for the n-gram, and calculating a respective indexing power for the n-gram based on its respective normalized entropy, (4) ranking the n-grams based on their respective indexing powers to establish a ranked list of n-grams, and (5) establishing, for each folder of the one or more folders, a respective set of high-value n-grams based on the ranked list of n-grams. In turn, the high-value n-grams can be compared against n-grams of a new email to identify a target folder into which the new email should be sorted.