Improving Children Information Retrieval Using Cosine Similarity Measures

Description

ABSTRACT

This study is on children’s information retrieval. Children’s information retrieval is still for the greater part untouched territory. Meanwhile, children can become lost in the digital information world, because they are confronted with search interfaces, both designed by and for adults. Most current research on children’s information retrieval focuses on examining children’s search performance on existing search interfaces to determine what kind of interfaces are suitable for children’s search behaviour. However, to discover the true nature of children’s search behaviour, we state that research has to go beyond examining search strategies used with existing search interfaces by examining children’s cognitive processes during information-seeking. A paradigm of children’s information retrieval should provide an overview of all the components beyond search interfaces and search strategies that are part of children’s information retrieval process. Better understanding of the nature of children’s search behaviour can help adults design interfaces and information retrieval systems that both support children’s natural search strategies and help them find their way in the digital information world

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER PAGE

TITLE PAGE

APPROVAL PAGE

DEDICATION

ACKNOWELDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1      BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT

• PROBLEM STATEMENT
• AIM/OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT
• PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT
• SCOPE OF THE STUDY
• SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
• RESEACH QUESTION
• RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
• PROJECT ORGANISATION

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

• REVIEW OF THE STUDY
• CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
• CHILDREN’S INFORMATION BEHAVIORS
• EVALUATIONS OF EXISTING SYSTEMS
• SYSTEMS DESIGNED TO ADDRESS CHILDREN’S SPECIFIC INFORMATION RETRIEVAL CHALLENGES
• READING CHALLENGES: QUERIES, RESULTS, AND RELEVANCE JUDGMENT
• REVIEW OF EXISTING ALGEBRAIC MODEL
• WORKING OF PROPOSED SYSTEM

CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

• WORKING OF PROPOSED SYSTEM
• SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
• SYSTEM DESIGN

CHAPTER FOUR

RESULT ANALYSIS

• IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULT ANALYSIS

CHAPTER FIVE

• CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES

CHAPTER ONE

1.0                                                        INTRODUCTION

1.1                                           BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Information retrieval (IR) is the procedure in which a computer system can answer to a user’s query for text-related data on a particular subject. IR was one of the first and stays one of the most significant issues in the domain of natural language processing (NLP). Web search is the application of information retrieval methods to the largest corpus of text anywhere “the web” and it is the field in which most people cooperate with IR systems most often. An information retrieval process begins when a user enters a query into the system. Queries are proper statements of information needs, let’s say search strings in web search engines. In information  retrieval a query does not distinctively identify a single object in the collection. In its place, numerous objects may match the query, possibly with diverse measure of relevancy. Nearly all IR systems calculate a mathematical value on how well each object in the database matches the query, and ranks the objects according to this value. The top ranking objects are then exposed to the user. The procedure may then be recursive if the user wishes to improve the query. For efficiently retrieving appropriate documents by IR approaches, the documents are usually changed into a proper depiction. Each retrieval approach integrates a particular model for its document illustration purposes.

Children’s access to the information world is increasingly shifting from the physical library or classroom to the  digital world. Every day, more children have access to the internet. Since most children nowadays grow up using computers, they seem to manage working with them better than the average adult. However, can they find relevant information in this giant information world as easily as we all might think they can? Most studies on web usability are focused on adult information-seekers. These studies report all kind of problems adults experience during information-seeking and they offer guidelines how to design user-friendly websites. The study reported in this paper focuses on children’s information-seeking and discusses children’s search strategies and problems, and research directions to examine how to support children’s search behaviour in digital environments.

Most of the information-seeking problems experienced by children are due to the fact that search interfaces are designed by adults. Therefore, design tends to be based on adult search experiences. Unsurprisingly, search strategies required to find information are also based on adults’ experience. This causes problems for children, because children are different from adults in many ways: they have other needs than adults and their cognitive, social, physical and emotional development has not yet reached the adolescent formal operational stage of development (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969, in Cooper, 2005). The most obvious differences between children and adults in information-seeking behaviour, relate to interaction style (e.g. children scroll less than adults), navigation style (e.g. adult navigation style is more systematic than child navigation style), relevance (e.g. children use different relevance criteria than adults) and mind set (e.g. children have different concepts and categories in mind than adults). To help children in effective and efficient information-seeking, it is important to know how to give them access to the information world in ways consistent with their learning, cognitive development and curriculum.

The Netherlands Public Library Association (VOB) is aware of the importance of research on children’s access to the digital information world. That is why the VOB started a research program to investigate children’s search behaviour called ‘The digital youth library’. The study reported in this paper is an initial exploration in the domain of children’s information retrieval and the study is focused on children of 10 through 12 years which are not yet mature in their use of the internet.

Research on children’s information retrieval mostly focuses on testing children’s performance and examining their search strategies on a given interface. If a child’s performance is, for example, more effective and efficient with a particular search tool than with another search tool, researchers may conclude that this search tool is suitable for children’s search behaviour. However, to examine children’s natural search behaviour, we believe that research beyond interface is needed by examining ‘the black box’ of children’s information-seeking. That means we have to examine children’s cognitive processes when they are searching for information and determine what kind of concepts and categories they have in mind, such as images, shapes, feelings, or genres. It is also important to examine at what level of abstraction children develop concepts.

In this paper we have demonstrated the vector space model under our analysis for information retrieval Vector space model comes under algebraic mathematical model which characterize documents and queries generally as vectors, matrices, or tuples. The similarity of the query vector and document vector is represented as a scalar value. As we are focusing on the retrieval of information from heterogeneous data that is HTML, XML, text data etc. because the data we have available on the  internet and local computer directories which is heterogeneous nature. At present, the issue is even more complicated as repositories survive in a variety of formats (HTML, XML, relational DB, Web DB with query-interfaces, etc) and schemas, and both the content and the structure are changing in parallel. Thus, proficient IR systems grow to be more and more necessary to find those documents that answer to a certain information need. We are demonstrating the internal working of search engines using vector space model, so for that we need to understand the different level of filtration which uses the search engine that is indexing, ranking then display the top documents which matches with user query. Rstudio use the term document matrix indexing approach for indexing and then we apply vector space model for finding the similarity values of documents with the query. So for ranking we use cosine similarity which will be comparing with our approach moderated IDF- cosine similarity. At the last, the getting searched results in the form of documents according to the query.

1.2                                                   PROBLEM STATEMENT

Nowadays, children of very young ages and teenagers use the Internet extensively for entertainment and educational purposes. The number of active young users in the Internet is increasing everyday as the Internet is more accessible at home, schools and even on a mobile basis through cellphones and tablets. The most popular search engines are designed for adults and they do not provide customize tools for young users. Given that young and adult users have different interests and search strategies, research aimed at understanding the activities that young users carried out on the Internet, the way the search for information, and the difficulties that they encounter with state-of-the-art search engines, are urgently needed. The first contribution of this thesis addresses these research aims by providing a characterization, on a large scale, of the search behavior of young users. The problems they face when they search for information on the web, the topics they searched and the online activities that motivate search were explored in detail and contrasted against the search behavior of adult users.

1.3                     AIM AND OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT

This work is aimed at developing search tools for young users and for the design of educational literacy. The objectives of the study are:

1. to help young users to improve their chances to find appropriate content and to ease the exploration of results
2. To make digital search easy for children

• To design a children friendly search software

1.4                                                     SCOPE OF THE STUDY

In this study two different central problems were identified which were made to solve in the search process of young users: (1) difficulty representing the information needs with keyword queries, and (2) difficulty exploring the list of results. We found that focused queries are often required to access high quality content for young user with modern search engines. However, young users were found to submit queries that lack the specificity needed to retrieve content that is suitable for them, which leads to frustration during the search process. We propose novel query recommendation methods to improve the chances of young users to find content that is suitable and on topic. Concretely, we present an effective biased random walk based on information gain metrics. This method is combined with topical and specialized features designed for the information domain of young users. We show that our query suggestions outperform by a larger margin not only related query recommendation methods but also the query suggestions offered by the search services available today. In respect to the second difficulty, it was found that young users have a strong click bias, in which results ranked at the bottom of the result list are rarely clicked. This behavior greatly hampers their navigational skills and exploration of results. It also reduces the chances of young users to find suitable information, since appropriate content for this audience is ranked, on average, at lower positions in the result list in comparison to the content aimed at the average web user.

1.5                              SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study provides a better understanding of the nature of children’s search behaviour which can help adults design interfaces and information retrieval systems that both support children’s natural search strategies and help them find their way in the digital information world.

1.6                                                      RESEACH QUESTION

1. Why is information retrieval important?
2. What are the functions of information retrieval system?

• What is the need of information retrieval system and what are its objectives?

1. What does information retrieval mean?

1.7                                             RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In the course of carrying this study, numerous sources were used which most of them are by visiting libraries, consulting journal and news papers and online research which Google was the major source that was used.

1.8                                    PROJECT ORGANISATION

The work is organized as follows: chapter one discuses the introductory part of the work,   chapter two presents the literature review of the study,  chapter three describes the methods applied, chapter four discusses the results of the work, chapter five summarizes the research outcomes and the recommendations.