Hierarchical summarization for delivering information to mobile devices

Access to information via handheld devices supports decision making away from one’s computer. However, limitations include small screens and constrained wireless bandwidth. We present a summarization method that transforms online content for delivery to small devices. Unlike previous algorithms, ours assumes nothing about document formatting, and induces a hierarchical structure based on the relative importance of sentences within the document. As compared to delivering full documents, the method reduces the bytes transferred by half. An experiment also demonstrates that when given hierarchical summaries, users are no less accurate in answering questions about the documents.