Finding Out About: A Cognitive Perspective on Search Engine Technology and the WWW

by Richard K. Belew

Overview

The World Wide Web is rapidly filling with more text than anyone could have imagined a short time ago. However, the task of determining which data is relevant has become appreciably harder. In this original new work Richard Belew brings a cognitive science perspective to the study of information as a computer science discipline. He introduces the idea of Finding Out About (FOA), the process of actively seeking out information relevant to a topic of interest. Belew describes all facets of FOA, ranging from creating a good characterization of what the user seeks to evaluating the successful performance of search engines. His volume clearly shows how to build many of the tools that are useful for searching collections of text and other media. While computer scientists make up the book's primary audience, Belew skillfully presents technical details in a manner that makes important themes accessible to readers more comfortable with words than equations. Resources are available from the book's web site

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521734462
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Richard K. Belew is a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering departments at The University of California, San Diego. He is an associate editor of the journal Evolutionary Computation and co-editor (with Melanie Mitchell) of Adaptive Individuals in Populations (1996).

Table of Contents

1. Overview; 2. Extracting lexical features; 3. Weighting and matching against indices; 4. Assessing the retrieval; 5. Mathematical foundations; 6. Inference beyond the index; 7. Adaptive information retrieval; 8. Conclusions and future directions.

Editorial Reviews

"FOA is a comprehensive resource for teaching a programming-based information retrieval class. The text provides an integrated introduction to many topics in information retrieval with a strong emphasis on mathematical and machine learning models, as well as giving a clear account of implementation details for the programming assignments." Information Retrieval

From the Publisher

Culling the desired information from the chaff on the Web can be daunting. Bringing a cognitive perspective to the study of data/ information retrieval, Belew (computer science and engineering, U. of California, San Diego) introduces the Finding Out About search process<-->ranging from FOA's mathematical foundations and creating on-target query language, to making inferences beyond the index and evaluating search engine performance. Includes discussion of future directions in publishing; an auxiliary Web site; notes on freeware/shareware tools used in the book's production; and a CD-ROM containing a hypertext version of the book plus additional material. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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