Location (More info)

Class: Wednesday 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Date Range: Aug 29, 2016 - Dec 21, 2016
Location: Tuttleman Learning Center 0401A

Instructor

- Name: Eduard C. Dragut
- Email: edragut@temple.edu
- Office: SERC 348
- Office Hours: Wednesday 10:00AM - 12:00 AM or by email appointment

Teaching Assistants

- NA

Course Descriptions

The course will cover models for information retrieval, techniques for indexing and searching, query expansion, latent semantic indexing, and link analysis and ranking. The course will introduce students to techniques behind search engines and federated search engines. The knowledge acquire in this course may lead to job opportunities in search technology and e-commerce companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!.

Tentative List of Topics


- Introduction to IR and Search Engines
- IR Models: Boolean and its Variations
- IR Models: Vector Spaces
- Inverted Index Construction
- Query Evaluation
- Indexing and Storage Issues
- IR Models: Probabilistic
- Search Engine Basics
- Evaluation of Information Retrieval Systems
- Relevance Feedback and Query Expansion
- Latent Semantic Indexing
- Link Analysis

Prerequisites

- CIS 2168.
- Probability and basic Statistics (A brief overview of the main utilized methods can be given during the course).
- Linear Algebra (A brief overview of the main utilized methods can be given during the course).
- If you do not meet any of these prerequisites, please see me asap.

Textbook

The content of the course will mostly from the following textbook:
- Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan and Hinrich Schuetze. Introduction to Information Retrieval. Cambridge University Press, 2008. book website.
A number of topics will be covered from
- Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice. Croft, W. Bruce; Metzler, Donald; Strohman, Trevor. Addison Wesley (2008). Book website.
- Information Retrieval: Implementing and Evaluating Search Engines. Charles L. A. Clarke, Gordon V. Cormack, and Stefan Buettcher. MIT Press. 2010Book Website.
- Additional materials will be provided in the form of technical papers.

Workload

- Homework (at least 3, not more than 6)
- A semester long project, which will be developed in several phases.
- One presentation. See list of papers TBA
- Final Exam (Date: TBD). Final exam is cumulative.

Project

- TBD

Presentation

- Each student will make a 15-20 minute presentation of a research paper to the rest of the class. There will be a list of papers to choose from. Please send me an email to sign up for a presentation.

Grading

The final grade will be based upon the following:
- Homeworks: 20%.
- Project: 40%.
- Presentation: 10%.
- Final Exam: 30%
- Extra-credit points may be given, up to 5%, based on the activity in class and the labs.

Late Submission Policy

Late submission is subject to a 10% penalty for each day late. After three days, late submissions will not be accepted. Students are strongly advised that any act of cheating will result in a score of 0 for the entire assignment and repeat offences will be reported to the Office of the Dean of Students and will result in an automatic F grade. You are encouraged to discuss problems and ideas but the final solution or code must be your own.

Classroom Requirements

  • Cell phones must be turned off or set on vibrate during class.
  • Laptop/notebook computers and tablets cannot be used during class.

Disability Disclosure

Any student who has a need for accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss the specific situation as soon as possible. Contact Disability Resources and Services at 215-204-1280 in Room 100, Ritter Annex to coordinate reasonable accommodations for students with documented disabilities.