Course Details for A.Y. 2019/2020

Course Objectives

The aim of the course is to provide students with knowledge of some aspects of Information Retrieval (IR) and how a modern search engine is built and maintained. At the end of the lessons, and passing the exam, the student should be able to: 1) know the fundamentals of Information Retrieval and to understand how to build a modern search engine. 2) To understand the needs of information and how they can be met. 3) To know the basics of Boolean retrieval. 4) To know how an inverted index works and its main components and related notions. 5) To understand how to structure and implement an error-tolerant inverted index in various ways. 6) To understand how to build an inverted index and how to compress and use a compressed index efficiently. 7) To have some knowledge on the evaluation in Information Retrieval are given. 8) To know the Link analysis, the Page Rank and hubs and authorities algorithms. 9) To outline of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 10) Since it is an introductory course of only three credits, the ability to apply knowledge and understanding is limited to Search Engine Optimization, which however involves the logical understanding of the whole course. 11) The student should further understand why a search engine does not always provide the answer to information needs and know how to reformulate the queries more effectively. To start to know how to evaluate websites. 12) The student should be able to describe the topics of the course with sufficient rigor and clarity. To be able to formalize and communicate problems, ideas and solutions in relation to the topics of the course. Implicitly, these skills are very useful in building websites. 13) The student should be able to undertake studies subsequent with a high degree of autonomy and to learn with ease topics, related to the course, of which there is only partial knowledge.

Course Content

• This is a course of three credits, and therefore very short. A credit will be dedicated for learning the fundamentals of Information Retrieval and understanding how to build a modern search engine. To know and understand the needs of information and how they can be met. To know the basics of Boolean retrieval. To know how an inverted index works and its main components and related notions like posting list, granularity of documents, Tokenization, Normalization, Stop words, stemming, skip pointers, positional indexes. One credit will be dedicated to know how to structure an error-tolerant inverted index in various ways. To know how to construct an inverted index and how a compressed index can be compressed and used efficiently. The third credit will be devoted to notes on the evaluation in Information Retrieval, to Link analysis, Page Rank and hubs and authorities and finally to some topics on Search Engine Optimization.

Learning Outcomes (Dublin Descriptors)

On successful completion of this course, the student should

Prerequisites and Learning Activities

Mandatory:: Basic knowledge developed in the first two years of university: basic data structures such as lists and pointers, basic knowledge of analysis and algebra, basic knowledge of computer architectures.

Assessment Methods and Criteria

A written test is made which is called "interactive". Indeed after the student answered to first questions regarding concepts and basic definitions and tests necessary to pass the exam, the correction is done together with the student himself and, as a general rule, questions are asked according to the answers given, to the precision, to the correctness, to the exposition capacity of the student, and according to the demonstrated logical capacity. This occurs in several similar phases until the commission reaches a judgment deemed valid and reliable. In general, a student must know the basic definitions and basic techniques to pass the exam and then the grade will also grow in proportion to the subjects in which he has been able to answer and also, and we repeat, depending on the answers given. , or rather from the precision, correctness and exposition capacity of the student, from the demonstrated logical capacity. In particular, to assess the ability to apply knowledge and understanding and also the learning skills, students' ability to understand and integrate demonstrations and logical reasoning on 1) topics related to course but which they were not strictly treated as topics of the course or discussion on the most advanced topics in the case of students with an evaluation close to the maximum or 2) topics in which the students expressed uncertainties or inaccuracies to see if they can be more certain or precise. Sometimes a student's self-assessment is also asked for a discussion.

Textbooks

• Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan, Hinrich Schütze, An Introduction to Information Retrieval , Cambridge University Press. versioni preliminari sono disponibili liberamente sul web a cura degli autori stessi   
• Google, Search Engine Optimization Sono disponibili e liberi sul web tanti documenti e filmati sul SEO, alcuni curati da Google    

Notes

• During teaching periods, the reception time is Wednesday from 15:00 to 19:00 and Thursdays from 11.30am to 1.30pm. In the other periods, contact the teacher.

Course page updates

• A.Y. 2013/2014
• A.Y. 2014/2015
• A.Y. 2015/2016
• A.Y. 2016/2017
• A.Y. 2017/2018
• A.Y. 2018/2019
• A.Y. 2019/2020