THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Document hand1.pdf contains the LATEST information about this course. Until contents is finalized this web-page might reflect material of another course or previous semester. PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION. MATERIAL CHANGES

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:	alexg@cs.njit.edu
OFFICE:	GITC 4213, 4th floor	TEL:	(973)-596-3244
OFFICE HOURS:	Mon 4:00-5:30pm and Tue 4:00- 5:30pm
OFFICE HOURS:	By appointment Mon/Tue/Wed
CLASS HOURS:	Mon 10:00-12:55, FMH 110

Web Page: http://www.cs.njit.edu/~alexg/courses/cs345/index.html

The following also works: http://web.njit.edu/~alexg/courses/cs345/index.html

1.2 Course Administration

Prerequisites

CS 280 and one of CS 241/CS 252. 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(300) + Best-5-of-9(450). HW1-HW5 are ordinary homeworks but HW6 is a paper presentation considered as the sixth homework (and handed out out of sequence with the rest). Each one is worth 90 points. You must work alone on them. Three programming assignments PA1-PA3. Each one is worth 90 points; a maximum of two students can work together on each one of them and each one would collect the assigned points. HW6 is a paper presentation; a 30-minute reservation slot needs to be booked in advance and a one-page summary needs submitted 3 working days in advance.

Exams

Both exams are open-textbook only. You may bring a hard-copy of the textbook but you are not allowed to borrow one during the exam or bring in class other material. Exam1 is on Mon Oct 21, 90mins, 250 points. Exam2 is on ??? Dec ??, 120mins, 300 points; date to be announced by the Registrar.

ExamConflicts

Per University regulations.

Due Dates

Paper submissions for HW1-HW5 by start of class; email submissions for HW1-HW5 MUST be received by email before 10:00am the day they are due. We acknowledge submissions promptly. It's up to you to properly form and submit an email. For HW6 the deadline is specified in it. For PA1-PA3 it is midgnight (23:59) the day they are due (Monday). Use an NJIT email address and include a Subject line as specified in Handout 0. Late submission penalty: 20\% per 24-hours starting at one minute after deadline.

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. Programming problems will be graded based on test instances decided by the instructor on an AFS machine (afsconnect1,afsconnect2). Do not expect partial credit if your code fails to run on all test instances, and you do not provide a bug report.

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, 85-90% or more usually guarantees an A.

Collaboration

Collaboration of any kind is NOT allowed in the in-class exams and the homeworks. An exception to this rule is assignments PA1-PA3 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 we will filter other email address origins. Use the appropriate subject line as specified in Handbout 0. Include CS 345-001 in the subject line then.

Missing class

If you miss a class and there is no Exam or Homework 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. You also need to present your case to the Dean of Students.

Programs

Follow submission guidelines for PA1-PA3.