1. A computer-implemented method for identifying facts described by electronic documents, comprising: defining a query, the query posing a question having an answer formed of terms from the electronic documents; creating one or more hypothetical facts in response to the query and the electronic documents, each hypothetical fact representing a possible answer to the query, wherein creating one or more hypothetical facts in response to the query comprises: parsing the query to filter out noise words and produce filtered terms; searching a repository of facts comprising attributes and values to identify attributes corresponding to the filtered terms; searching the electronic documents to identify terms that frequently appear near the filtered terms; and forming one or more hypothetical facts responsive to the attributes corresponding to the filtered terms and the terms that frequently appear near the filtered terms in the electronic documents; corroborating the one or more hypothetical facts using the electronic documents to identify a likely correct fact; and presenting the identified likely correct fact as the answer to the query.
1. A computer-implemented method for identifying facts described by electronic documents, comprising: defining a query, the query posing a question having an answer formed of terms from the electronic documents; creating one or more hypothetical facts in response to the query and the electronic documents, each hypothetical fact representing a possible answer to the query, wherein creating one or more hypothetical facts in response to the query comprises: parsing the query to filter out noise words and produce filtered terms; searching a repository of facts comprising attributes and values to identify attributes corresponding to the filtered terms; searching the electronic documents to identify terms that frequently appear near the filtered terms; and forming one or more hypothetical facts responsive to the attributes corresponding to the filtered terms and the terms that frequently appear near the filtered terms in the electronic documents; corroborating the one or more hypothetical facts using the electronic documents to identify a likely correct fact; and presenting the identified likely correct fact as the answer to the query. 2. The method of claim 1 , wherein defining a query comprises: receiving a real-time query from a user of a web site.