1. A computerized device comprising: a processor; and a user interface operatively connected to said processor, said user interface receiving a question comprising question terms, said processor automatically searching sources of data containing passages to produce candidate answers to said question, said searching being based on said question terms, and said searching identifying passages that support each of said candidate answers based on scoring features that indicate whether said candidate answers are correct answers to said question, said processor automatically creating a scoring feature-specific matrix for each scoring feature of said scoring features, each said scoring feature-specific matrix specifying all different combinations of said passages, said candidate answers, and said question terms as vectors and comprising score fields for score values for each specific question term with respect to a specific passage and a specific candidate answer, and each score field containing a score value corresponding to a vector and indicating how a passage term of said specific passage aligns with said specific question term to support said specific candidate answer as being a correct answer to said question; said processor automatically combining said vectors by calculating a statistical measure of said vectors to produce a collapsed score for each of said question terms, said statistical measure comprising a collapsing function; said processor automatically combining collapsed scores to produce a combined score for each of said candidate answers; and said processor automatically ranking said candidate answers based on each said score value.