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Abstract

In this work we address the challenging case of answering count queries in
web search, such as ``number of songs by John Lennon''. Prior methods merely
answer these with a single, and sometimes puzzling number or return a ranked
list of text snippets with different numbers. This paper proposes a methodology
for answering count queries with inference, contextualization and explanatory
evidence. Unlike previous systems, our method infers final answers from
multiple observations, supports semantic qualifiers for the counts, and
provides evidence by enumerating representative instances. Experiments with a
wide variety of queries, including existing benchmark show the benefits of our
method, and the influence of specific parameter settings. Our code, data and an
interactive system demonstration are publicly available at
https://github.com/ghoshs/CoQEx and https://nlcounqer.mpi-inf.mpg.de/.