35. The process according to claim 33 wherein the preselected number is equal to the number of the respective iteration, and the predetermined number is equal to the number of the last iteration.
33. In a computer system for identifying documents matching a query, in which the system has a database containing identifications of documents in a document collection and defining a plurality of representations representing the contents of the documents, the collection comprising a plurality of documents, and query means for defining a query containing a plurality of concepts, a process of identifying a predetermined number of documents of the document collection containing representations that have high probabilities of matching the query containing a plurality of concepts, the process comprising: iteratively selecting successive samples of a plurality of documents from the collection for examination, each sample containing fewer documents than the entire collection, and each successive sample containing documents different from each previous sample; calculating the probabilities that documents contained in the sample contain representations that match the query; identifying, during each iteration, a preselected number of documents having the highest probabilities, the documents being selected from a group consisting of a respective sample of documents and the documents identified during the next previous iteration, the preselected number being different for each iteration and no greater than the predetermined number; and outputting identifications of the predetermined number of identified documents upon completion of the last iteration.