School of Computing

Information Retrieval

NUS SoC, 2013/2014, Semester II Video Conferencing Room (COM1 02 VCRm) / Fridays 11:00-13:00

This iteration of this class has ended -- please see the most recent version at: http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~cs3245.

Module Description, Aims and Objectives:

Module Description, Aims and Objectives: This module discusses the basic concepts and methods of information retrieval including capturing, representing, storing, organizing, and retrieving unstructured or loosely structured information. The most well-known aspect of information retrieval is document retrieval: the process of indexing and retrieving text documents. However, the field of information retrieval includes almost any type of unstructured or semi-structured data, including newswire stories, transcribed speech, email, blogs, images, or video. Therefore, information retrieval is a critical aspect of Web search engines. This module also serves as the foundation for subsequent modules on the understanding, processing and retrieval of particular web media.

N.B. We will be teaching and using the Python programming language throughout this class. We will using Python 2.6.x (2.6.6 or 2.6.4) instead of the updated Python 3.x, as the NLTK library that we will also be using is currently incompatible with 3.x.

Course Characteristics:

Note to NUS-external visitors: Welcome! If you're a fellow IR course instructor looking for lecture material, you can see the syllabus menu item on the left for a preview. Please contact me if you'd like to use any of my material. Thanks!