The explosive growth of available data on the Internet demands intelligent information systems that can sift through all available information and find out the most valuable and relevant information. This course studies the basic principles and practical algorithms used for those Web Information Systems. The contents include: Web search, recommendation system, Web information extraction, etc. The course emphasizes both the above applications and solid modeling techniques that can be extended for other applications.

Students will:

1. Learn the techniques behind Web search engines, E-commerce recommendation systems, etc.
2. Get hands on project experience by developing real-world applications, such as building a small-scale Web search engine, a Web page management system, or a movie recommendation system.
3. Learn tools and techniques to do research in the area of information retrieval or text mining.
4. Lead to the amazing job opportunities in Search Technology and E-commerce companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Amazon.

Prerequisite:

CS 251 is required. A reasonable background in C/C++ programming is preferred (if you are not confident for this, please consult the instructor).