Seminars [270]

Forthcoming Events [0]

Past Events [270]
 

News

 
KMi Seminars
Information Retrieval and Quantum Theory
This event took place on Wednesday 16 July 2008 at 11:30

 
Guido Zuccon

In this talk I will illustrate how Quantum Theory can be used to model Information Retrieval. In particular, I will briefly illustrate some previous work in this area, such the ones by van Rijsbergen ("The Geometry of Information Retrieval", CUP 2004) and Melucci ("A basis for Information Retrieval in Context", TOIS June 2008). Then I will describe how a technique for IR based on Logical Imaging can be formalized in terms of Quantum Theory: part of the work that I am going to introduce will be presented at TIR2008 in a paper titled "A formalization of Logical Imaging for Information Retrieval using Quantum Theory". Finally, I'm going to illustrate the ideas I planned to investigate during my visit to KMi.

 
KMi Seminars
 

Social Software is...


Social Software
Social Software can be thought of as "software which extends, or derives added value from, human social behaviour - message boards, musical taste-sharing, photo-sharing, instant messaging, mailing lists, social networking."

Interacting with other people not only forms the core of human social and psychological experience, but also lies at the centre of what makes the internet such a rich, powerful and exciting collection of knowledge media. We are especially interested in what happens when such interactions take place on a very large scale -- not only because we work regularly with tens of thousands of distance learners at the Open University, but also because it is evident that being part of a crowd in real life possesses a certain 'buzz' of its own, and poses a natural challenge. Different nuances emerge in different user contexts, so we choose to investigate the contexts of work, learning and play to better understand the trade-offs involved in designing effective large-scale social software for multiple purposes.