Part I
Course Duration: One semester
Credit Units: 3
Level: P5
Medium of Instruction: English
Prerequisites: Nil
Precursors: Nil
Equivalent Courses: Nil
Exclusive Courses: Nil
Part II
Course Aims
This course aims to provide a broad view and detailed knowledge of all key topics in modern information retrieval. Basic concepts such as retrieval evaluation, query languages, query operations, indexing and searching will be emphasized. Some advanced topics including web page ranking, and rank aggregation in metasearch will be discussed.
Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs)
Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:
No. | CILOs | Weighting
(if applicable) |
1. | describe the basic concepts and models in information retrieval; | |
2. | apply basic techniques in user relevance feedback, indexing and searching; | |
3. | design and build a simple text retrieval systems. Such a system includes (1) storage of documents (converting documents into vectors); (2) ranking algorithms and relevance feedback algorithms. | |
4. | read research papers in this area. | |
Teaching and Learning Activities (TLAs)
(Indicative of likely activities and tasks designed to facilitate students’ achievement of the CILOs. Final details will be provided to students in their first week of attendance in this course)
Teaching pattern:
Suggested lecture/tutorial/laboratory mix: 2 hrs. lecture; 1 hr. tutorial.
CILO No. | TLAs | Hours/week
(if applicable) |
CILO 1 | Lectures will be given to introduce basic concepts and models; | |
CILO 2 | Some exercises will be given in tutorials; | |
CILO 3 | A min-project will be assigned; | |
CILO 4 | Some research papers will be distributed and some research papers will be discussed in the lecture and tutorials. | |
Assessment Tasks/Activities
(Indicative of likely activities and tasks designed to assess how well the students achieve the CILOs. Final details will be provided to students in their first week of attendance in this course)
Examination duration: 2 hours
Percentage of coursework, examination, etc.: 50% CW; 50% Exam
CILO No. | Type of Assessment Tasks/Activities | Weighting
(if applicable) | Remarks |
CILO 1 | Small assignments will be given. Questions will be given in the final exam. | 10% for the assignments | The final exam is 50% |
CILO 2 | Assignments will be given. Questions will be given in the final exam. | 10% for the assignment | |
CILO 3 | Marks will be given for the min-project. | 20% for the min-project | |
CILO 4 | Students will submitted a report on the research papers that they have read. | 10% for the report | |
Grading of Student Achievement: Refer to Grading of Courses in the Academic Regulations
Grading pattern: Standard (A+, A, A-…F)
For a student to pass the course, at least 30% of the maximum mark for the examination must be obtained.
Coursework contains both oral presentation of research papers and mini-project.
Part III
Keyword Syllabus:
Retrieval evaluation, Query operations, Text languages and properties, Indexing and searching, Parallel and distributed IR, User interfaces and visualization, Multimedia IR: models and languages, indexing and searching, Searching the web, Libraries and bibliographical systems, Digital libraries.
Syllabus
| 1. | Retrieval evaluation
Recall, precision, and alternative measures for the quality of queries.
|
| 2. | Query languages
Keyword-Based querying. Pattern matching. Structure queries and query protocols
|
| 3. | Query operations
User relevance feedback including query expansion and term rewriting for vector models. Probabilistic models and evaluation of relevance feedback strategies. Automatic local analysis: query expansion through local clustering and local context analysis. Automatic global analysis: based on similarity thesaurus and statistical thesaurus.
|
| 4. | Indexing and searching
Indexing methods include inverted files, suffix trees, and signature files. Searching: exact matching methods including KMP, Boyer-Moore algorithm, etc. Approximate pattern matching including string matching allowing errors, regular expressions and extended patterns.
|
| 5. | Web page ranking and rank aggregation in metasearch
Algorithms for page ranking and algorithms for rank aggregation from different search engineers.
|