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.

General Information

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 - 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.

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