Tailored supporting evidence

1. A method, comprising:

receiving, by a question answering system, a case from a user;

assigning a first level of user sophistication, of a plurality of levels of user sophistication, to the user;

determining a level of evidence sophistication, of a plurality of levels of evidence sophistication, associated with each of a plurality of items of supporting evidence in a corpus of information used to process the case;

selecting, by operation of a computer processor, a subset of the plurality of items of supporting evidence based on the determined levels of user sophistication and evidence sophistication; and

returning the selected subset to the user as part of a response to the case.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

assigning a level of evidence sophistication to each item of supporting evidence in the corpus based on at least one of: (i) a concept, subject, or topic of one or more passages in the item of supporting evidence and (ii) unstructured text passages in the item of supporting evidence.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first level of user sophistication of the user is assigned based on at least one of: (i) a profile of the user, (ii) a default level of sophistication associated with a deployment of the question answering system, and (iii) a level of sophistication of an input provided by the user.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the subset includes items of supporting evidence having a determined level of evidence sophistication matching the first level of user sophistication of the user.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first level of user sophistication of the user is further assigned based on a role of the user.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein a first item of supporting evidence is not selected as part of the subset, the method further comprising:

modifying at least one term in the first item of supporting evidence based on the first level of user sophistication of the user; and

returning the modified first item of supporting evidence to the user as part of the response to the case.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

receiving a request from the user to view items of supporting evidence having a second level of evidence sophistication, different than the first level of user sophistication of the user; and

responsive to the request, returning at least one item of supporting evidence having the second level of evidence sophistication to the user.

8. A system, comprising:

one or more computer processors; and

a memory containing a program, which when executed by the one or more computer processors, performs an operation comprising:

receiving, by a question answering system, a case from a user;

assigning a first level of user sophistication, of a plurality of levels of user sophistication, to the user;

determining a level of evidence sophistication, of a plurality of levels of evidence sophistication, associated with each of a plurality of items of supporting evidence in a corpus of information used to process the case;

selecting a subset of the plurality of items of supporting evidence based on the determined levels of user sophistication and evidence sophistication; and

returning the selected subset to the user as part of a response to the case.

9. The system of claim 8 , the operation further comprising:

assigning a level of evidence sophistication to each item of supporting evidence in the corpus based on at least one of: (i) a concept, subject, or topic of one or more passages in the item of supporting evidence and (ii) unstructured text passages in the item of supporting evidence.

10. The system of claim 8 , wherein the first level of user sophistication of the user is assigned based on at least one of: (i) a profile of the user, (ii) a default level of sophistication associated with a deployment of the question answering system, and (iii) a level of sophistication of an input provided by the user.

11. The system of claim 8 , wherein the subset includes items of supporting evidence having a determined level of evidence sophistication matching the first level of user sophistication of the user.

12. The system of claim 8 , wherein the first level of user sophistication of the user is further assigned based on a role of the user.

13. The system of claim 8 , wherein a first item of supporting evidence is not selected as part of the subset, the operation further comprising:

modifying at least one term in the first item of supporting evidence based on the first level of user sophistication of the user; and

returning the modified first item of supporting evidence to the user as part of the response to the case.

14. The system of claim 8 , the operation further comprising:

receiving a request from the user to view items of supporting evidence having a second level of evidence sophistication, different than the first level of user sophistication of the user; and

responsive to the request, returning at least one item of supporting evidence having the second level of evidence sophistication to the user.

15. A computer program product, comprising:

a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable program code embodied therewith, the computer-readable program code executable by one or more computer processors to perform an operation comprising:

receiving, by a question answering system, a case from a user;

assigning a first level of user sophistication, of a plurality of levels of user sophistication, to the user;

determining a level of evidence sophistication, of a plurality of levels of evidence sophistication, associated with each of a plurality of items of supporting evidence in a corpus of information used to process the case;

selecting a subset of the plurality of items of supporting evidence based on the determined levels of user sophistication and evidence sophistication; and

returning the selected subset to the user as part of a response to the case.

16. The computer program product of claim 15 , wherein the operation further comprises:

assigning a level of evidence sophistication to each item of supporting evidence in the corpus based on at least one of: (i) a concept, subject, or topic of one or more passages in the item of supporting evidence and (ii) unstructured text passages in the item of supporting evidence.

17. The computer program product of claim 15 , wherein the first level of user sophistication of the user is assigned based on at least one of: (i) a profile of the user, (ii) a default level of sophistication associated with a deployment of the question answering system, and (iii) a level of sophistication of an input provided by the user.

18. The computer program product of claim 15 , wherein the subset includes a first item of supporting evidence, wherein the level of evidence sophistication of the first item of supporting evidence matches the first level of user sophistication of the user, wherein the subset does not include a second item of supporting evidence, wherein the level of evidence sophistication of the second item of supporting evidence does not first match the level of user sophistication of the user.

19. The computer program product of claim 15 , wherein the first level of user sophistication of the user is further assigned based on a role of the user.

20. The computer program product of claim 15 , wherein a first item of supporting evidence is not selected as part of the subset, wherein the operation further comprises:

modifying at least one term in the first item of supporting evidence based on the first level of user sophistication of the user; and

returning the modified first item of supporting evidence to the user as part of the response to the case.