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Richard L. Smith '70 Freshman Seminar
Google and Ye Shall Find???
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FRS 117
Fall 2007
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Directory
General Information
| Schedule and Assignments
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Administrative Information
Meeting time: Wed., 1:30-4:20 pm
Meeting place: Forbes
College Main, Rm. 121
Extra meetings: If a class should be canceled, a make-up class
will be scheduled during reading
period. Class participants
will
be consulted before any make-up class time is chosen.
Professor: Andrea
LaPaugh, 304 CS Building, 258-4568,
aslp@cs.princeton.edu,
Office hours: TBA
Course secretary: Mitra Kelly, 323 CS building, 258-4562,
mkelly@cs.princeton.edu
Reading
Required book:
Battelle, John, The Search: How
Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our
Culture, Penguin Group (paperback), 2006.
This is not a textbook. It is
written for a general audience and describes the history of Google and
Web search. It focuses on the business side, but does a good job
of noting the major technological achievements, which we will
discuss. It will help motivate and inform our discussions.
I will assign specific chapters for each discussion topic; see
the
Schedule and Assignments page of
the course Web site.
I have requested a copy be put on reserve at Firestone Library but
recommend you purchase it.
Supplemental reading on reserve at Firestone Library:
Langville, Amy N. and Carl D. Meyer, Google's PageRank and Beyond: The Science
of Search Engine Rankings , Princeton University Press,
2006.
This is a technical book. In
early chapters, it provides a good introduction to
search; later chapters present search algorithms at a
mathematical level more advanced than the treatment in this
seminar. The book is provided as a technical
reference. It is on reserve at Firestone Library as a required
text so that it can be borrowed for only 3 hours at a time and
will be readily
available to students.
Miller, William, and Pellen, Rita, editors, Libraries and Google, Haworth
Information Press, 2005.
This is a volume of essays by
university librarians concerning Google
Book Search and libraries.
Vise, David A. and Mark Malseed, The
Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology
Success of Our Time, Delacorte Press, 2005.
This is another history of
Google. Vise and Malseed are a bit more the cheerleaders in
writing Google's story, and
they do not give the level of references to technical achievements that
Battelle's book contains. It is not a substitute for Battelle's
book. However, I provide it as another perspective for those
interested in reading more about Google.
You can find a comparative book review in the
New York Times, Nov 21, 2005. (
A version of this review also appeared in the
International
Herald Tribune,
Nov. 27, 2005.)
Communication
Reading assignments and discussion questions will appear on the Schedule and Assignments page of the
course Web site; links to written assignments will also appear on the Schedule and Assignments page.
The
course also
has a blog.
Important
announcements on all aspects of the course will be made on the blog
authoring site (also reachable by logging in from the blog site,
where blog entries appear).
Students are responsible for monitoring the Schedule
and Assignments,
blog,
and announcements
pages.
You are encouraged to use electronic mail to set up appointments,
leave
messages, and ask quick questions (like ``What was that reference you
gave
today in class?'' or ``I've been at McCosh Infirmary all week; can I
have
an extension on my assignment?'') However, an old fashioned
face-to-face
meeting is still best for clarifying confusions and other discussions.
Work of the Course
The course will have the following components:
- Class discussion
- Short writing assignments (blog)
- Problem-solving assignments
- Final paper
A.S. LaPaugh Thusday, September 13 11:15:25 EDT
2007
