THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Document hand1.pdf contains the LATEST information about this course. This page will be UP-TO-DATE after the first day of classes. Before that day, consult hand1.pdf as the information below might be that of a previous semester. PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION. DISREGARD CONTENTS

An introductory course on web-searching. Information vs data retrieval. The architecture of a search engine. Web crawling. Processing text (tokenization, stemming, stopwords, link analysis and markup). Ranking algorithms based on indexes and links (eg. Kleinberg"s HITS, Google"s PAGERANK). Retrieval Models. Search engine evaluation. Case studies (e.g. Google cluster architecture).

INSTRUCTOR:	Alex Gerbessiotis	E-MAIL:	alg485@cs.njit.edu
OFFICE:	GITC 4213, 4th floor	TEL:	(973)-596-3244
OFFICE HOURS:	Mon 4:00-5:30pm and Thu 4:00- 5:30pm
OFFICE HOURS:	By appointment Mon/Tue/Thu
CLASS HOURS:	Mon 6:00-9:05pm, FMH 305

Course Web Page: http://www.cs.njit.edu/~alexg/courses/cs485/index.html

The following also works: http://web.njit.edu/~alexg/courses/cs485/index.html

1.2 Course Administration

Prerequisites

Equivalent to CS 114 and CS 252 or CS 241. Knowledge of last 4 digits of your NJIT id.

Textbook

Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice by B. Croft et al., Addison-Wesley, ISBN-10: 0136072240, 2010.

CourseWork:

2 exams (including the final); Assignments

Grading:

1000 points = Exam1(250) + Exam2(250) + Best-4-of-8(500). (Although 8 or more assignments are to be handed out, you are expeceted to submit for grading no more than 7; the best 4 of those 7 submitted will count towards the final grade.)

HW

Each assignment is worth 12.5%. (In the remainder, 1% is 10 points.) Assignment A8 will be a paper presentation on the last week of classes. A 30-minute reservation slot needs to be booked in advance.

Exams

Both exams are open-textbook only. You may bring a copy of the textbook but you are not allowed to borrow one during the exam. Exam1 is on Mon Oct 24, 120mins, 250 points. Exam2 is on Mon Dec 19, 120mins, 250 points.

ExamConflicts

Per University regulations. (This is a higher numbered course.)

Due Dates

Email submisssions MUST be received by email before noon of the last day they are due. We acknowledge submissions promptly. It's up to you to properly form and submit an email (see Handout 2). Use an NJIT email address. Late submission penalty: 20% per 24-hours. Written submissions are due by the beginning of a class at the classroom.

Topics

Tentatitive list of topics

• T1 : WebSearching : Introduction
  T2 : Fundamentals of Information Retrieval. 
  T3 : The retrieval process: Crawlers and crawling.
  T4 : Search Engine Architecture, Duplicate Handling
  T5 : Document Processing: Parsing and Tokenization , 
  T6 : Document Processing: Indexing
  T7 : Modeling retrieval and ranking
  T8 : Queries, Query processing, and Interfaces
  T9 : Search engine evaluation
  T10: Classification and categorization
  T11: Google MAPREDUCE model
  T12: Case Studies: GFS
  T13: Other Topics: Social Search
  

Objective 1

Learn the fundamentals of Web searching.

Objective 2

Learn how a search engine works and identify the components of its architecture.

Objective 3

Learn the requirements and characteristics of web crawling, document fetching and processing.

Objective 4

Learn how to use fundamental data structures to index and store information for processing web search requests.

Objective 5

Learn the fundamentals of ranking and ranking algorithms.

Objective 6

Learn how high performance computing can benefit web searching. DT>Outcome 1

Be able to explain fundamental concepts related to Web searching and the architecture of search engines.

Outcome 2

Be able to identify and explain the output of search engines in the context of web searching.

Outcome 3

Be able to understand ranking and indexing algorithms and their limitations.

Outcome 4

Be able to design a search engine architecture based on input design requirements.

Outcome 5

Be able to effectively use high performance computing in the design of a Web search infrastructure.

Outcome 6

Be able to effectively apply ranking algorithms.

* Exam 2 is scheduled by the Registrar ** In this calendar, a week ends on a Monday

Grading

Written work will be graded for conciseness and correctness. Be brief and to the point and write clearly.

Grades

Check the marks in written work and report errors promptly. Resolve any issue no later than the Reading Day. For students who submit programming work or have a paper presentation, an email with your grade will be sent back to you. The final grade is decided based on a 0 to 1000 point performance. A 50% or more is C or better, 90% or more usually guarantees an A.

Collaboration

Collaboration of any kind is NOT allowed in the in-class exams and the assignments. An exception to this rule is assignments that explicitly allow collaboration (teams of two); in such a case collaboration is allowed between members of the team only for the specific assignment component. Students who turn in work/answers to questions sourced through the Internet or otherwise, or is product of another person's/student's work, risk severe punishment, as outlined by the University. The work you submit must be the result of your own effort.

Mobile Devices

Mobile phones/devices and/or laptops/notebooks MUST BE SWITCHED OFF (NOT JUST SILENCED) before the class exams. Switch off noisy devices before class.

Email/SPAM

Send email from an NJIT email address. NJIT spam filters or us will filter other email address origins. Do not send course email to the instructor's email address unless there is a good reason (e.g. you don't want the grader to read the email or it's urgent and you believe the instructor will respond faster). Include CS 485 in the subject line then.

Missing class

If you miss a class and there is no Exam due it's up to you to make up for lost time.

Missing Exam

If you miss an exam and there is a valid documentation for your absence, such documentation must be presented within 3 working days from the day the reason for the absence is lifted. The maximum accommodation will be the number of missing days to the exam date.

Programs

If an assignment requires programming work, submission guidelines will be provided for email submission of the assignment. It is imperative that you follow the guidelines in such a case. Submitted code must conform to the requirements of Handout 2.