Contemporary Issues in
Computer Science
Google Query Completion
as Social Science Research
1.
Do
the following experiment at least three times:
a.
Choose
your favorite search engine. Write
down which one you have chosen.
b.
Using
the search engine that you chose in part a, begin typing a query and watch to
see the completions that are suggested to you. Write them down.
c.
What
have you just learned about what other people are thinking?
Choose
queries that will tell you something about contemporary culture. For example, typing “quadr” and seeing that the top suggestion is
“quadratic formula” isn’t what we’re looking for. Typing, “What actors” and
seeing what comes up is more interesting.
You
may have to try more than three things to get results that tell you something
about our shared view of the world.
Write down the three most interesting ones you did.
It
may amuse you also to try playing the game:
2.
Read
the following article, which you can get from the New York Times directly:
or
from the class website:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~ear/cs349/in-search-engine-results-a-peek-at-what-we-wonder.xml.htm
3.
Repeat
step 1, using some of the examples from the article to give you
ideas. Write down the three most
interesting things that you tried.
If you want to use a different search engine, that’s fine. Just tell us which one you are using.
For parts 1 and
3 you’ll turn in a list. Each
entry in the list will be:
·
The
search engine that you used.
·
The
partial query that you typed.
·
The
ordered list of completions that you were shown.
·
Your
answer to question (c). This can be
one or two sentences.
You should come
to class prepared to tell us some of the examples that you tried.
See the Homeworks section of the Class
Policies page for further instructions on how to complete this and other
homework assignments.