Mean Average Precision (MAP)

Mean Average Precision (MAP) is the classic single-number summary of ranked-retrieval effectiveness under binary relevance and the headline metric of the TREC ad hoc retrieval tracks. For a single query, average precision (AP) computes the precision of the result list at each rank where a relevant document appears and averages those values, rewarding systems that rank all relevant documents highly; MAP is then the mean of AP across a set of queries. Buckley and Voorhees's 2000 SIGIR analysis of evaluation-measure stability showed that average precision is among the most stable and discriminating IR measures, requiring fewer queries than alternatives like precision at a fixed cutoff to reliably tell two systems apart. MAP remains a standard reporting metric for ranked retrieval, complementing graded-relevance measures such as nDCG.