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Assignment 1
Questions
Each question should be answered in about 1 - 3 paragraphs.
- What are the key drivers to the use of a search engine? Explain
the factors that lead to the use of a particular search engine.
- If you run a query on "apple" vs. on "apples" at a major search
engine, you get quite different results on the first search results
page. Try varying several one-word queries on major search
engines, running the query first as a singular and then as plural
noun. Attempt to summarize the kinds of differences you see in these
two kinds of queries.
- In our in-class exercise, we didn't keep track of the positions
that the words in the song titles held, but most indexers do record
where in the document each word occurs (its position). Name three
ways that search engines make use of the information about the
positions of words in web pages.
- Some search engines are experimenting with innovative interfaces. Try
out ask.com on a query like "kitty" or "jets", for example. Describe
what the interface is doing. Based on what we've learned in class,
and on your intuitions, discuss which aspects you think will work
well, and which will not.
- Choose a web page that interests you, and then look at some of the
anchor text in web pages that link to this page. Do they do a good
job of summarizing the content of the page? List and describe the
text on the anchor links to that page. (Hint: you can find which
pages link to another page by using the site: command in the advanced
search options of many search engines. But you'll still have to do
some work to find the anchor text from the pages that are shown.)
- In the New York Times article, what do you think Amit Singhal means when he says:
"Search over the last few years has moved from 'give me what I typed' to 'give me what I want'"?
- For the following queries, classify what you think the user
intent is, using the taxonomy from the Rose and Levinson reading.
Justify your answers.
- banana
- let it be
- Why is my dog sick?
- Google has a tilde (synonym) operator, ~. Try out a few queries
(that are not in the readings) and tell us what happens when you use
it. How is the behavior of this operator related to the notion of ambiguity (and
disambiguation) that we discussed in class?
- What would make mobile search (meaning search on small mobile
devies like cell phones) tricky to do well from a usability perspective?
Homework Rules
You may discuss the homework questions with the TAs and other
students, but your examples and your responses must be entirely your
own.
Turning in your Homework
This assignment is due no later than 9:00am on Monday, Oct 8 2007.
Please name your homework document in the following way:
Lastname_Firstname_Assign1.doc
Lastname_Firstname_Assign1.pdf
etc.
Turn in assignment online here
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