Information Retrieval: Algorithms and Heuristics (The Information Retrieval Series)(2nd Edition) (Paperback)

by David A. Grossman (Author), Ophir Frieder (Author) "Since the near beginnings of civilization, human beings have focused on written communication..." (more)
Key Phrases: Sparck Jones, Connection Machine, World Wide Web (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
From the reviews of the second edition:

"This is a book that has great breadth and depth a ] . If you are a computer science student a ] this is an excellent textbook. It has comprehensive coverage of different approaches a ] . Headings are relevant to the content and the language used is clear and concise. This makes it a good reference to look up a ] . For those of you directly involved in the exploration of different approaches to algorithmic search a ] this book would be invaluable." (Melanie Kendell, Informer, Issue 17, Winter 2005/2006) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

Interested in how an efficient search engine works? Want to know what algorithms are used to rank resulting documents in response to user requests? The authors answer these and other key information retrieval design and implementation questions.

This book is not yet another high level text. Instead, algorithms are thoroughly described, making this book ideally suited for both computer science students and practitioners who work on search-related applications. As stated in the foreword, this book provides a current, broad, and detailed overview of the field and is the only one that does so. Examples are used throughout to illustrate the algorithms.

The authors explain how a query is ranked against a document collection using either a single or a combination of retrieval strategies, and how an assortment of utilities are integrated into the query processing scheme to improve these rankings. Methods for building and compressing text indexes, querying and retrieving documents in multiple languages, and using parallel or distributed processing to expedite the search are likewise described.

This edition is a major expansion of the one published in 1998. Besides updating the entire book with current techniques, it includes new sections on language models, cross-language information retrieval, peer-to-peer processing, XML search, mediators, and duplicate document detection.

Product Details

• Paperback: 332 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 2nd edition (December 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402030045
• ISBN-13: 978-1402030048
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #202,460 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #9 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Software > Natural Language Processing
  #12 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence > Heuristic & Constrained Search

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Clear "Fundamentals" Book, February 12, 2002

By	Gordon Rios (Palo Alto, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Information Retrieval: Algorithms and Heuristics (The Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science) (Hardcover)

If you're working in the IR industry, or want to develop software in this field, this book is a great starting point. A clarification: this will is not a book for researchers -- instead think of it as a book for advanced practitioners or engineers needing to work in this area. Inside you'll see complete worked examples of several fundamental computations rather than detailed proofs.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great reference and textbook for IR practitioners and students, September 2, 2005

By	Dr. E. Garcia - See all my reviews

Information Retrieval is a textbook for computer science students and a reference book for IR practitioners. The References section is an excellent starting point for conducting literature research.

The best features of the book are its readability -reviewed by students and IR scientists- and the authors' willingness to provide step-by-step hands-on examples and plenty of graphics. The authors' transparency with how-to calculations encourages readers to learn by doing.

This book is recommended for IR practitioners, computer science departments and technical libraries. It is also recommended for search engine optimization specialists and web developers that need to incorporate search technology, ranking algorithms and heuristics into their projects.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Guide to The Field, August 31, 2006

By	Geraldo XEXEO "Computer Geek and Professor" (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Second Edition of "Information Retrieval", by Grossman and Frieder is one of the best books you can find as a introductory guide to the field, being well fit for a undergraduate or graduate course on the topic. It is somewhat a parallel to "Modern Information Retrieval", by Baeza-Yates and Ribeiro-Neto.

Chapter 2, "Retrieval Strategies", make a very good review of the main information retrieval models. The main characteristic of this chapter is that it also give some introduction to the theory needed to understand the models. In this chapter, the authors take care to provide not only equations, but also examples of how these equations work in small sets of documents, making it easier for student to grasp their workings. It is a long and detailed chapter, maybe the best you can find among the field.

Chapters 3 to 8, make a broad review of IR techniques, however they do not go deep in any technique. The best part is that they have pointers to all the techniques discussed. Those chapters, are actually broad surveys of the title chapter topic.