programming project

When you turn in your project, I'd like to see the code you wrote or modified; figures for how large the indices are for words and n-grams, for example details from a directory listing; and a couple of sample queries and the results generated.

April 23, 25 and 30

I note that my blogging has taken a break.

Web search could probably be a course on its own, covering search as well as web services, RSS, and maybe semantic web stuff. In an IR course, web search may be good as a running example, but it can't take over the course.

A newer textbook can cover new topics, and that's important in an IR course. Is it my imagination, though, or is it true that some older textbooks are better than some new ones, even if some material is dated?

Callan's paper is fine, but I feel the need to add a survey of peer-to-peer IR.

May 2, 7 and 9

So far, the student talks have gone well. People have been staying in the time limits very well, without too much prodding from me, and that's good. I'm learning from listening to the talks, and that's good too!

schedule of talks

5/2
Ron Roff
Joel G.
Mike Wilson
JC Montminy

5/7
Chris
Mansi Radke
Beenish
Luke

5/9
Stephen
Ginny
Jason
Sayeed


5/14
Justin
Mike
Marcin
Sandor
Aparna

class Monday evening 4/17

So, you may have noticed that we had no class yesterday evening. The Catonsville area and UMBC in particular suffered a power outage that closed us down from noon until 6pm. The department mail servers were running, but I had no machine that had power, so there was no way for me to notify you.

In hindsight, I should have put a notice on the door, but frankly that slipped my mind.

Anyway, I apologize to those who made the trip to campus for nothing.

I plan to cover cross-language IR on Wednesday. I'll be posting a paper or two shortly.

format for writing project presentations

max. 15 minutes - I suggest you rehearse

2-3 minutes/slide

title and your name
executive summary <= 50 words
what piqued your interest in this topic?

present an example (multiple slides, but make it snappy)
OR
explain what you learned

what assumptions are made? what are the advantages and disadvantages?

future work - questions that still need to be answered
conclusions

peer-review is fine! don't be mean to each other

Monday April 9

The material on passage-based retrieval won't take too long to present. We'll probably discuss the programming project a little. With the Writing Project due soon, i.e. Wednesday of next week April 18? Homework 3 will be due the following Monday April 23.