CCA1108 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Web Directory, Correlation Does Not Imply Causation, W. M. Keck Observatory
CCA1108
WEEKLY READER SUMMARY: “Searching the web”
Anne hires you as an intern for IER to do fact/research checking for Dave and Ranjit.
Dave: quick answers to specific questions
Ranjit: new perspectives on recurring economic problems
a specific question: that you can phrase easily, when you find it, you know the
answer asap
an explanatory question: open ended, harder to phrase; difficult to determine a
good answer.
As you narrow your search, you might end up heading in the wrong direction (blind
alley) so you need to move back.
As your explanatory search expands, you might find yourself collecting tangential
information (data which is come what related to your topic but doesn’t help your
answer.)
WEB SEARCH PROCESS:
1. Carefully formulate & state your question
2. select appropriate tools
3. evaluate search results (refine/redefine q’s)
4.
specific q’s explanatory q’s
-repeat prev. steps refining - repeat prev. steps, learning more and
and narrowing down until broadening your scope, until you’ve gathered
you fine specific answer. enough info about the topic.
USING SEARCH ENGINES:
Web search tools: search engines, directories, metasearch engines, other web
resources.
A Web search engine is a website that finds other web pages that match a word or
phrase you enter. This is called a search expression or a query. A search expression
or query might also include instructions that tell the search engine how to search.
A basic search engine includes a text box for entering expression and a command
button to begin search (BING & GOOGLE).
A search engine does not search the web to find a match; it searches only its own
data-base of information about web pages that it has collected \, indexed and
stored.
URL= Uniform search locator; is it’s address. If you put this into any search engine
you will often get different results because each one has a different set of
information. Some search engines do not collect their own info and buy the right to
use the database of another search engine. however, because they all use different
procedures to retrieve info, they can still yield different results if they buy from
another.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Most engines report the number of hits they find. A hit is a web page that contains
text that matches a specific search expression.
All search engines provide a series of results pages, which are web pages that list
hyperlinks to the web pages containing text that matches your search expression.
Most search engines use Web robots to build their databases. A web robot is also
called a bot or a spider, which is a program that automatically searches the web to
find new websites and update info about old websites that are already in the
database and delete info in the database when a website no longer exists (important
job).
When you click on hyperlinks you will find that some web pages no longer exist. A
hyperlink to a web page like this is called a dead link.
When the search engine receives a submission. it sends its web robot to visit the URL
and collect data about the site. The organizations that operate search engines often
sell advertising space on the search engine web page and on the results page.
Search engine operators also sell paid placement rights on results pages. A paid
placement is the right to have a link to your website appear on the results page
when a user enters a specific term. ( Eg: Toyota purchases the right to have a link to
your website appear on the search results page whenever a user enters the term
‘car’. Most, but not all search engines label these paid placement links as
“sponsored”, and they are usually called sponsored links. If the advertising appears
in a box on the page it’s called a banner ad.
Search engines use the revenue from sponsored links and banner ads to generate
profit after covering the costs of maintaining computer hardware and software. The
only price a user pays for access to these excellent search tools is that you will see
banner ads on many pages.
ACTIVITY:
“find the amount of rainfall in Belize for Dave. This is a specific search question because you
are looking for a fact and you’ll know when you have found the fact.
1. formulate and state q’s: “AVERAGE RAINFALL IN BELIZE.”
2. Because the q’s is specific, you decide that a basic search engine would be a good
tool to use.
3. obtain results, review and evaluate and decide which is a good answer.
4. if the results don’t answer the question you need to go back and narrow down more
specifically.
Dave is interested in your findings, he asks you to check one more search engine just
to make sure facts are correct.
USING MORE THAN ONE SEARCH ENGINE:
The best way to determine how a specific search engine interprets search
expressions is to read the help pages on the search engine web site. As you
become more experienced, you will find that you use two or three search
engines for most of your work.
Bing, Exalead, and Wolfram Alpha are examples of search engines that were
introduced in recent years to compete with established search sites such as
Google.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Anne hires you as an intern for ier to do fact/research checking for dave and ranjit. Ranjit: new perspectives on recurring economic problems a specific question: that you can phrase easily, when you find it, you know the answer asap an explanatory question: open ended, harder to phrase; difficult to determine a good answer. As you narrow your search, you might end up heading in the wrong direction (blind alley) so you need to move back. As your explanatory search expands, you might find yourself collecting tangential information (data which is come what related to your topic but doesn"t help your answer. ) Web search process: carefully formulate & state your question, select appropriate tools, evaluate search results (refine/redefine q"s) Repeat prev. steps refining - repeat prev. steps, learning more and and narrowing down until broadening your scope, until you"ve gathered you fine specific answer. enough info about the topic. Web search tools: search engines, directories, metasearch engines, other web resources.
