Course: 707.000 Web Science and Web Technology

Graz University of Technology, Summer 2008

Classes: Mondays 12:15 - 13:45, February 2008 - June 2008, Room HS i12 (Inffeldgasse 16b),

https://online.tu-graz.ac.at/tug_online/lv.detail?clvnr=125182,
Markus Strohmaier, Klaus Tochtermann

 

Instructor: Markus Strohmaier
Adress: ICK1130H (HS i12), Inffeldgasse 16b, 1.Kellergeschoß, 8010 Graz, Austria
e-mail: markus.strohmaier at@ tugraz.at

Teaching Assistants (TA):

Questions related to this course: Your question might be of interest to other students! Therefore, before sending an e-mail to the instructor or the teaching assistants, please consider posting it to the course newsgroup tu-graz.lv.web-science. The course team reads the newsgroup frequently and will try to answer your question as soon as possible.

Newsgroup: tu-graz.lv.web-science on news.tugraz.at

Students with special needs: If you need accomodation for any type of physical or learning disability, please contact me via e-mail to set up a meeting where we can discuss potential modifications for your participation.

Announcements:

About the course:

This course aims to provide students with a basic knowledge and understanding about the structure and analysis of selected web phenomena and technologies. Topics include the small world problem, network theory, social network analysis, graph search and technologies/standards/architectures such as JSON, RDF, REST and others.
Course Requirements
: Basic java programming skills.

Course work:

Course work will consist of

Instead of doing home assignments and the final exam (which is the default way of obtaining a grade), interested students can apply to do a projects. However, students are not "entitled" to do a project automatically - projects are limited per semester, and will be assigned based on availability and suitability of the candidates. UPDATE: There are no projects available at this point.

Marking scheme:

The following weights will be assigned to home assignments and the final exam (totalling 100%):

In order to obtain a positive grade, you need to have a total score of 51% or more. There will be no extra exam (no "Nachklausur").

Preliminary course schedule and weekly readings:

Note to students: Changes to this schedule will likely be made. Additional readings may be assigned. Access credentials for protected resources will be handed out in class.

Note to instructors: All teaching materials on this website are available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Austria License, except for referenced material. Access to protected papers is only available to enrolled students.

Creative Commons License

Week
Date
Title, Links Comments and Links

Week 1

25.2.2008

Introduction and Motivation: Web & Science

(slides, home assignment 1)

In this class, we will discuss the course organization and provide a basic motivation for and introduction to the course.

Readings: Web science: a provocative invitation to computer science, B. Shneiderman, Communications of the ACM 50 25--27 (2007) [Web link]
Readings: Chapter 1 & 2, A Framework for Web Science, T. Berners-Lee and W. Hall and J. A. Hendler and K. O'Hara and N. Shadbolt and D. J. Weitzner Foundations and Trends® in Web Science 1 (2006) [Web link]

Week 2
3.3.2008

The Small World Problem

home assignment 1 due
(slides)

We will discuss several examples and research efforts related to the small world problem and set the ground for our discussion of network theory and social network analysis.

Readings: An Experimental Study of the Small World Problem, J. Travers and S. Milgram Sociometry 32 425-443 (1969) [Protected Access]
Optional: The Strength of Weak Ties, M.S. Granovetter The American Journal of Sociology 78 1360--1380 (1973) [Protected Access]
Optional: Worldwide Buzz: Planetary-Scale Views on an Instant-Messaging Network, J. Leskovec and E. Horvitz MSR-TR-2006-186. Microsoft Research, June 2007. [Web Link, the most recent and comprehensive study on the subject!]

Week 3
10.3.2008

Network Theory and Terminology

(slides, home assignment 2)

In this class, we will discuss network theory fundamentals, including concepts such as diameter, distance, clustering coefficient and others. We will also discuss different types of networks, such as scale-free networks, random networks etc.

Readings: Graph structure in the Web, A. Broder and R. Kumar and F. Maghoul and P. Raghavan and S. Rajagopalan and R. Stata and A. Tomkins and J. Wiener Computer Networks 33 309--320 (2000) [Web link, Alternative Link]
Optional: The Structure and Function of Complex Networks, M.E.J. Newman, SIAM Review 45 167--256 (2003) [Web link]

Week 4
7.4.2008

Social Network Analysis

home assignment 2 due
(slides, home assignment 3)

What are fundamental entities in social networks and what information is contained in social graphs? We will discuss some selected concepts in social network analysis, such as one- and two mode networks, prestige and centrality, and cliques, clans and clubs.

Readings: Web tool predicts election results and stock prices, J. Palmer, New Scientist, 07 February (2008) [Protected Access]
Optional: Social Network Analysis, Methods and Applications, S. Wasserman and K. Faust (1994)

Week 5
14.4.2008

Affiliation Networks

home assignment 3 due
(slides)

How can we analyze and understand affiliation networks? In this class, we will discuss properties of affiliation networks and we will investigate the use of Galois lattices for the exploration of structural patterns in bi-partite graphs.

Optional : Using Galois Lattices to Represent Network Data. Sociological Methodology, (23):127--146, (1993) [Protected Access]

Week 6
21.4.2008

Network Evolution and Processes

(slides, home assignment 4)

In this class, we will discuss the nature of network evolution and some selected network processes. We will discuss graph generation algorithms that generate networks with different interesting characteristics.

Optional : The Structure and Function of Complex Networks (chapter 8), M.E.J. Newman, SIAM Review 45 167--256 (2003) [Web link]
Optional: Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks, A.L. Barabasi and R. Albert, Science 286, 509 (1999) [Protected Access]

Week 7
28.4.2008

Link Analysis and Search

home assignment 4 due
(slides, home assignment 5)

What are ways of searching in graphs? In this class, we will discuss basics of link analysis, including Google's PageRank algorithm as an example.

Readings: The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web, L. Page and S. Brin and R. Motwani and T. Winograd (1998) [Protected Access]

Week 8
5.5.2008

Webtechnologies I

home assignment 5 due
(slides, home assignment 6, files_for_ha6.zip)

This class focuses on a selected subset of web technologies that are of interest to the topics of this course.

Readings: Chapter 5 "Representational State Transfer (REST)", in "Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architecture", Roy Fielding, Dissertation, University of California Irvine, 2000
Optional: Chapter "Representational State Transfer (REST)" in "Pro PHP XML and Web Services", R. Richards 633--672, 2006 [Protected Access]


Week 9
19.5.2008

Metadata, Tagging and Folksonomies

(slides)

In this class, we will discuss metadata as well as current phenomena such as tagging and folksonomies.

Readings: Ontologies Are Us: A Unified Model of Social Networks and Semantics, P. Mika, International Semantic Web Conference, 522-536, 2005. [Web link]
Optional: Folksonomies: power to the people, E. Quintarelli, ISKO Italy-UniMIB Meeting, (2005)

Week 10 26.5.2008

Web Mining and Information Retrieval I (lecture in German)

(slides)

This class introduces basics of web mining and information retrieval including, for example, an introduction to the Vector Space Model and Text Mining.
Guest Lecturer: Dr. Michael Granitzer

Optional: Modeling the Internet and the Web: Probabilistic Methods and Algorithms, Pierre Baldi, Paolo Frasconi, Padhraic Smyth, Wiley, 2003 (Chapter 4, Text Analysis) [Protected Access]

Week 11
2.6.2008

User Intentions and Intentional Structures on the Web

home assignment 6 due
(slides)

Search engines - such as Google - have been characterized as "Databases of intentions". This class will focus on different aspects of intentionality on the web, including goal mining, goal modeling and goal-oriented search.

Readings: M. Strohmaier, M. Lux, M. Granitzer, P. Scheir, S. Liaskos, E. Yu, How Do Users Express Goals on the Web? - An Exploration of Intentional Structures in Web Search, We Know'07 International Workshop on Collaborative Knowledge Management for Web Information Systems in conjunction with WISE'07, Nancy, France, 2007. [Web link]
Readings: Automatic identification of user goals in web search, U. Lee and Z. Liu and J. Cho WWW '05: Proceedings of the 14th International World Wide Web Conference 391--400 (2005) [Web link]

Week 12
9.6.2008

User Intentions and Intentional Structures on the Web II

(slides)

In this lecture, we will focus on analyzing user goals in search query logs.

Readings: M. Strohmaier, P. Prettenhofer, M. Lux, Different Degrees of Explicitness in Intentional Artifacts - Studying User Goals in a Large Search Query Log, CSKGOI'08 International Workshop on Commonsense Knowledge and Goal Oriented Interfaces, in conjunction with IUI'08, Canary Islands, Spain, 2008. (Web link)

 

Week 13
16.6.2008

Webtechnologies II

(slides)

The semantic web represents a current research effort to increase the capability of machines to make sense of content on the web. In this class, Peter Scheir will give a guest lecture on the basic principles underlying the semantic web vision, including RDF, OWL and other standards.

 

Week 14
23.6.2008
Final Exam

No aids are allowed at the final exam.

Course policies

Further selected course material available online:

Selected Resources:

There is no required text book for this course, however you might find it helpful to have a look at the following resources:

Web links:

Books:

Free online books:

Tutorials:

Videos / Lectures: