Mariam Salloum

Textbooks

• Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice
  Bruce Croft, Donald Metzler, Trevor Strohman
  Addison Wesley; 1 edition (February 16, 2009)
  ISBN-10: 0136072240/ISBN-13: 978-0136072249
  Available here : http://ciir.cs.umass.edu/downloads/SEIRiP.pdf
  

Also recommended for reference:

• Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan and Hinrich Schutze, Introduction to Information Retrieval, Cambridge University Press. 2008.

• Modern Information Retrieval the concepts and technology behind search

• Hearst, M.A. Search User Interfaces, Cambridge University Press, September, 2009

Course Description

This course will cover models for information retrieval, techniques for indexing and searching, and algorithms for classification and clustering. It will also cover latent semantic indexing, link analysis and ranking, Map-Reduce architecture and Hadoop, to different degrees of detail, time permitting.

• Efficient text indexing

• Boolean and vector-space retrieval models

• Evaluation and interface issues

• IR techniques for the web, including crawling, link-based algorithms, and metadata usage

• Document clustering and classification

• Traditional and machine learning-based ranking approaches

• Social networks search

Grade Breakdown

Grades will be weighted as follows:

• Class participation and attendance is expected. If you have to miss a class, then please let me know ahead of time. Attendance is important and short quizzes will be administered to ensure you are keeping up with lecture and assigned readings.

• Assignments: We will have ( 3-4) written and programming assignments. All assignments are individual work unless otherwise noted. Assignments are accepted unto 2 days late

• Midterms : We shall have two midterms during the quarter. These are written in-classes midterms. No makeups will be administered arranged with the professor or accompanied by a doctor's note.

• Project: Instead of a final exam, we will have a final project done in teams of three.

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is fundamentally about ethical behavior. Appropriate collaboration and research of previous work is an important part of the learning process. However, not all collaboration or use of existing work is ethical. The overarching principles which should guide you when determining whether or not it is appropriate to use a source or collaborate with a classmate involve answering these questions: Does this fit within the spirit of the assignment/activity?

In any ethical decision there is always judgment involved. Some assignments and activities involve collaborating with a team, in others you are asked to work individually. You are expected to have some common sense and to use it.

Does this help me or someone else in the class to improve our skills and/or understanding of class material?

As a guiding principle, talking about concepts is usually good, talking about specific answers or approaches to problems is usually not.

Does this misrepresent my own (or someone else's) capabilities and understanding of materials for the purpose of grading?

Attribution of sources is a key idea here; if you use work which is not your own, that work should be cited. For this class, citation is not required to be in a specific format, but any citation should clearly identify the author and source of any work which is not your own. Refer to the university policy on plagiarism and cheating.

Have any specific instructions been given for this assignment?

Not all assignments are the same. On some you will be given explicit instructions about what level of collaboration is appropriate, and you are expected to abide by those restrictions even if you disagree with them.

If you are at all uncertain about an action, whether it be working with another student, researching existing code, or something else, you are always welcome to ask the instructor for clarification.

The severity of sanctions imposed for an academic integrity violation will depend on the severity of the transgression and ascertained intent of the student. Penalties may range from failing the assignment to failing the course. Again, actions will adhere to the Academic Honesty policies of BCOE and UCR