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Andrei Broder
Ten years of Web Search Technology
Abstract
Within one decade, Web search has grown to a mass
medium. The current number of web searches within a day probably
dwarfs the total number of searches performed on classic information
retrieval systems prior to 1995. But web search is not classic IR:
for example, the web ``corpus'' is open ended and decided by the
search provider; and the intent behind a web search is often not
informational--it might be navigational (give me the URL of the site I
want to reach) or transactional (show me sites where I can perform a
certain transaction, e.g. shop, download a file, or find a map).
The first part of this talk will dissect some of the
differences between classic IR and web search and show how global
search engines evolved and keep evolving to deal with the needs of web
users and the economics of the Internet. Next we shall discuss how
the popularity of web search is influencing user expectations and
technological developments in the enterprise arena. Finally, we shall
explore "the combination hypothesis" -- the idea that further advances
in search technology will be based on a cross-disciplinary
approach.
Bio
Andrei Broder is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and the
CTO of the Institute for Search and Text Analysis in IBM Research.
From 1999 until 2002 he was Vice President for Research and Chief
Scientist at the AltaVista Company. Previously he has been a senior
member of the research staff at Compaq's Systems Research Center in
Palo Alto. He was graduated Summa cum Laude from Technion, the
Israeli Institute of Technology, and obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in
Computer Science at Stanford University under Don Knuth. His main
research interests are the design, analysis, and implementation of
randomized algorithms and supporting data structures, in particular in
the context of large scale information retrieval and applications.
Broder is co-winner of the Best Paper award at WWW6 (for his work on
duplicate elimination of web pages) and at WWW9 (for his work on
mapping the web). He has published more than seventy papers and was
awarded seventeen patents. He serves as chair of the IEEE Technical
Committee on Foundations of Computer Science.
Jill Burstein
Automated Essay Evaluation: From NLP Research Through
Deployment as a Business
Abstract
Automated essay scoring was initially motivated by its
potential cost savings for large-scale writing assessments. However,
as automated essay scoring became more widely available and accepted,
teachers and assessment experts realized that the potential of the
technology could go way beyond just essay scoring. Over the past five
years or so, there has been rapid development and commercial
deployment of automated essay evaluation for both large-scale
assessment and classroom instruction. A number of factors contribute
to an essay score, including varying sentence structure, grammatical
correctness, appropriate word choice, errors in spelling and
punctuation, use of transitional words/phrases, and organization and
development. Instructional software capabilities exist that provide
essay scores and evaluations of student essay writing in all of these
domains. The foundation of automated essay evaluation software is
rooted in NLP research. This talk will walk through the development
of CriterionSM, e-rater®, and Critique
writing analysis tools, automated essay evaluation software developed
at Educational Testing Service --from NLP research through deployment
as a business.
Bio
Jill Burstein is a Principal Development Scientist at
Educational Testing Service. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics
from the City University of New York, Graduate Center. The focus of
her research is on the development of automated writing evaluation
technology. She is one of the inventors of e-rater®, an automated
essay scoring system developed at Educational Testing Service. She
has collaborated on the research and development of capabilities that
provide evaluative feedback on student writing for grammar, usage,
mechanics, style, and discourse analysis for
CriterionSM, a web-based writing instruction
application. She is co-editor of the book "Automated Essay Scoring: A
Cross-Disciplinary Perspective."
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