THE CITY COLLEGE

Department of Computer Science

CSc I0810. Topics in Software and Systems

(Modern Information Retrieval: Search Technologies)

Fall 2006 Office: NAC 7/244 Hours: M/W

Prof. Abbe Mowshowitz Phone: (212) 650-6161 email: abbe@cs.ccny.cuny.edu

TEXT: Baeza-Yates & Ribeiro-Neto. Modern Information Retrieval. Addison-Wesley, 1999.

GRADING: Midterm (20%), term project (40%), final exam (40%).

This course is an advanced introduction to information retrieval with a special emphasis on Web searching. The course will begin with a presentation of retrieval strategies (i.e., vector space, probabilistic, inference networks, extended Boolean, and others). Next, retrieval evaluation methods (i.e., relevance-based measures and alternatives) will be discussed, followed by query languages and operations, and indexing and searching. The latter part of the course will focus on Web searching (i.e., search engine architectures, user interfaces, ranking, crawling and indexing).

TERM PROJECT: Each student will be assigned a research or programming task related to Web searching. You are expected to prepare a written report on the research or the program, and to present a summary of your research or to demonstrate your program in class.

Course Outline

Part I. Retrieval Strategies and Evaluation

Session 1. Classic vector space model

Session 2. Set theoretic and probabilistic models

Session 3. Language and other models

Session 4. Relevance-based and other performance measures

Midterm

Part III. Queries, Indexing and Searching

Sessions 5. Query languages and operations

Session 6. Indexing

Session 7. Searching

Part V. Web Searching

Session 8. Models of the Web and search engine architecture

Session 9. Ranking

Session 10. Crawling and indexing

Session 11. Result fusion

Session 12. Metasearchers and searching using hyperlinks

Sessions 13 & 14. Presentation of student project results