Undergraduate Course: Text Technologies (Level 10) (INFR10025)
Course Outline
| School | School of Informatics |
College | College of Science and Engineering |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Credits | 10 |
| Home subject area | Informatics |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/tts |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | The course deals with retrieval technologies behind search engines, such as Google. The course will aim to strike a balance between theoretical and system-related aspects of the field. The course will cover:
1. Theoretical aspects, including properties of text, queries, relevance, major retrieval models and evaluation;
2. System-related aspects, including crawlers, text processing, index construction and retrieval algorithms; and
3. Applications, including cross-language and multi-media search.
The same material will be covered in the level 10 and level 11 versions of the course. Level 11 students should expect more challenging assignments and an increased programming load. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
Students MUST have passed:
Informatics 2A - Processing Formal and Natural Languages (INFR08008)
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | Students MUST NOT also be taking
Text Technologies (Level 11) (INFR11027)
|
Other requirements | Successful completion of Year 3 of an Informatics Single or Combined Honours Degree, or equivalent by permission of the School.
This course has the following mathematics prerequisites:
1. Probability theory: random variables, expectation, joint and conditional probabilities; discrete and continuous univariate distributions. [at the level of MI1 and MI4]
2. Algebra: definition of vectors and matrices; vector addition and inner product; matrix multiplication. [at the level of MI2]
3. Calculus: functions of several variables, univariate integrals and derivatives, univariate maxima and minima. [at the level of MI1]
4. Special functions: log, exp [at the level of MI1] |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | Yes |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2011/12 Semester 1, Available to all students (SV1)
|
WebCT enabled: No |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| Central | Lecture | | 1-11 | 12:10 - 13:00 | | | | | | Central | Lecture | | 1-11 | | | | 12:10 - 13:00 | |
| First Class |
Week 1, Monday, 12:10 - 13:00, Zone: Central. Old College Lt183 |
| Exam Information |
| Exam Diet |
Paper Name |
Hours:Minutes |
|
|
| Main Exam Diet S2 (April/May) | | 2:00 | | |
|
| Delivery period: 2011/12 Semester 1, Part-year visiting students only (VV1)
|
WebCT enabled: No |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| Central | Lecture | | 1-11 | 12:10 - 13:00 | | | | | | Central | Lecture | | 1-11 | | | | 12:10 - 13:00 | |
| First Class |
Week 1, Monday, 12:10 - 13:00, Zone: Central. Old College Lt183 |
| Exam Information |
| Exam Diet |
Paper Name |
Hours:Minutes |
|
|
| Main Exam Diet S1 (December) | | 2:00 | | |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
1 - Describe the main algorithms for processing, storing and retrieving text.
2 - Show familiarity with theoretical aspects of IR, including the major retrieval models.
3 - Discuss the range of issues involved in building a real search engine
4 - Evaluate the effectiveness of a retrieval algorithm |
Assessment Information
Written Examination 70
Assessed Assignments 30
Oral Presentations 0
Assessment
There will be a final exam, contributing 70% of the course mark. The remaining 30% will be assessed through a combination of problem sets and programming exercises involving application of existing algorithms and evalution techniques.
If delivered in semester 1, this course will have an option for semester 1 only visiting undergraduate students, providing assessment prior to the end of the calendar year. |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Lectures will cover the following topics, with a typical lecture integrating material from more than one aspect.
1. Theoretical aspects:
* The nature of text, Zipf and Heaps laws, clumping
* Information needs, queries and relevance
* Evaluation of retrieval systems
* Vector-space model and latent semantic indexing
* Probabilistic model and relevance feedback
* Language-modeling approaches
* Inference networks and structured queries
2. Systems aspects:
* Search engine architecture
* Crawling and feeds
* Text processing and representation
* Indexing methods and compression
* Distributed search and meta-search
* Presentation and visualization of search results
3. Applications:
* Web search
* Cross-language retrieval
* Multi-media retrieval
* Clustering and classification
* Topic detection and tracking
* Passage retrieval and question-answering
Relevant QAA Computing Curriculum Sections: Information Retrieval, Natural Language Computing, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Developing Technologies |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
* &«Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice&ª, W.B. Croft, D. Metzler, T. Strohman, Addison Wesley, 2008. Primary text, photocopies will be provided by instructor.
* &«Introduction to Information Retrieval&ª, C.D. Manning, P. Raghavan and H. Schutze, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
* &«Managing Gigabytes&ª, I.H. Witten, A. Moffat, T.C. Bell, Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
* &«Information Retrieval&ª, C. J. van Rijsbergen, Butterworths, 1979.
* &«Recommended Reading for IR Research Students&ª, A. Moffat, J. Zobel, D. Hawking. SIGIR Forum, 39(2), 2005. |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Lectures 20
Tutorials 0
Timetabled Laboratories 0
Non-timetabled assessed assignments 24
Private Study/Other 56
Total 100 |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Amos Storkey
Tel: (0131 6)51 1208
Email: A.Storkey@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Kate Weston
Tel: (0131 6)50 2701
Email: Kate.Weston@ed.ac.uk |
|
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