Course in Information Retrieval
Description
Searching for information is an everyday process. People search in order to close gaps in their knowledge and to advance the solution of a task. Information systems that enable a quick search in unstructured data are known as search engines. They help searchers to find what they need as quickly as possible. In contrast to structured data stored in databases, the search in unstructured data is usually characterized by vague queries and uncertain or incomplete knowledge. The role of search engines in the transfer of knowledge from producers to consumers of information is the subject of research in the field of information retrieval. The module teaches basic concepts and methods of information retrieval as well as the corresponding formal background. Essential contents are the architecture of search engines, acquisition and crawling, pre-processing and information extraction from unstructured text data, algorithms and data structures for indices and the processing of queries, retrieval models, learning-to-rank, retrieval axioms and (online) evaluation methods.
| Lecturer |
Prof. Dr. Martin Potthast
|
| Teaching Assistants |
Tim Hagen |
| Workload |
6 Credits: 2 SWS Lecture, 2 SWS Exercises |
| Prerequisites |
Passing grades in Grundbereich A and B (Examination regulations § 7 (2) and (3))
|
| Lecture |
Tuesday, 10:00 c.t. - 12:00, Hörsaal 0446 |
| Exercise |
Tuesday, 12:00 - 14:00, Hörsaal 0446 |
| Contact |
via email or office hours |
| Exam |
TBD |
Organization
- Lectures will take place in person, but have additionally been prerecorded. The videos can be accessed
by following the lecturenotes below, or on the Webis YouTube channel. [playlist]
- Lab and corresponding material consists of a project in which you develop your own domain-specific
information retrieval system. We will have regular tutorial sessions from TBD on.
- Examination will take place either as a written exam (90 min) or oral exam (30 min).
- Communication
- Discord — direct communication with teaching staff and announcements will be posted here. Please
email the
teaching staff for a link to join.
- Lecture website — materials and organisation annoucements will be uploaded on this website.
- Email — important announcements will be sent out via mail.
Lecturenotes
Lab Project
The lab project consists of building and evaluating an information system for a specific domain. This entails data
processing, implementing retrieval methods, and an analysis of the retrieval system.
Lab project material will be published here over the course of the semester.
| Date |
Title |
Materials |
Deliverables |
| 29.10.2024 |
- Lab Overview, Group Formation
- Milestone I Information Session
|
|
|
| 05.11.2024 |
- Architecture of a search engine
|
|
|
| 12.11.2024 |
- Exercise 1
- Relevance Annotations
|
|
|
| 19.11.2024 |
|
|
|
| 26.11.2024 |
|
|
|
Literature
- W.B. Croft, D. Metzler, T. Strohman. Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice.
[view]
- C.D. Manning, P. Raghavan, H. Schütze. Introduction to Information Retrieval.
[view]
Further Resources