Syllabus, Administrivia
Speaker
Schedule (at 141 website)
Readings
and Discussion sections (at 141 website)
Midterm and Final Project
Resources
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Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business
SIMS 290-2
Mondays 4:00-6:00pm, 2 units.
Location: 100 Genetics & Plant Biology Bldg
2 hours of lecture per week
CCN: 42751
Prerequisites: None.
Open to SIMS and CS graduate students and other graduate students with
permission of the instructor.
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Course Instructor and Lecturers
Prof.
Marti Hearst (hearst@sims.berkeley.edu)
212 South Hall, 510-642-8016
Office Hours: Mon 2-3pm; Thu 3-4pm
The organizer, Prof. Marti Hearst,
is an Associate Professor at SIMS, and has done extensive research on search user
interfaces. She is also on the Science Advisory Board for Search at Yahoo,
Inc. She will provide the introduction to the course, devise the homework
assignments, and create lectures for topics that are not covered by other speakers.
A set of top-notch experts have already been recruited and agreed to give
lectures for Fall 2005.
Synopsis
The World Wide Web brings much of the world's knowledge into the reach of nearly
everyone with a computer and an internet connection. The availability of
huge quantities of information at our fingertips is transforming government,
business, and many other aspects of society.
For most people, Web search engines (such as Google and Yahoo) are technologies
which have enormous influence on how people find and think about information.
They are the gateways, (or some might argue, gate keepers) to this vast sea of
information. With the rising importance of search engines come new legal,
business, and policy questions and considerations.
This course will examine these issues via a series of lectures from experts in
academia and industry. Students will first gain an understanding of the basics
of how search engines work, and then explore how search engine design impacts
business and culture. Topics include search advertising and auctions, search
and privacy, search ranking, internationalization, anti-spam efforts, local
search, peer-to-peer search, and search of blogs and online communities.
Class Meetings
The course will consist of one 2-hour lecture per week, and one 1-hour
discussion section per week. Each lecture will be delivered by one or more
experts from academia or industry. Each lecture will include at least 30 minutes
for question-and-answer sessions.
Student Activity
Students will be expected to attend the lectures; up to 2 lectures may be missed
through the course of the semester.
There will be two assignments for graduate students.
First, for the midterm, students will be expected to read a set of papers about a topic
of their choosing and write a summary of those papers.
Second, for the final grade, students will complete a research project
of their choice. This project can build on the literature review completed for
the midterm and can consist of writing a research paper,
designing and/or building system, doing a usability study or a needs assessment,
etc.
Readings
Suggested Book
There is a suggested book for graduate students in this course,
The Search, by John Battelle.
Students are encouraged to
read the first 3 chapters of this book before the lecture by the
book's author on Sept 12th.
Because the book is new, it is not available for purchase online until
Sept 8. Hence, we have purchased copies of the book which we will be
distributing to students on the first day of class (Monday, Aug 29).
Please bring a check for $19.50 to the first class session; make the
check out to "UC Regents". (We are doing it this way rather than
through the bookstore because the bookstore would have charged the
full price of $25.95 and we were able to obtain the books at a discount.)
Optional Suggested Book for Techies
For students who are interested in
independently studying how search engines work in detail, I strongly
recommend
Mining the Web by Soumen Chakrabarti.
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