Saturday, 16 May 2009 2.00 pm 5.

00 pm (Duration: 3 hours)

DEGREES OF MRes and MSci

ADVANCED RESEARCH READINGS IN COMPUTING SCIENCE (M)

(Answer ONE question)

This examination is worth 70%

You must not leave the examination room within the first hour or the last halfhour of the examination.

Information Retrieval Systems

1. In the past few years, the field of Information Retrieval has seen significant developments in terms of scale, modeling and applications. While classical ranking approaches focused on variants of the tf*idf weighting paradigm, modern applications such as Web search, Enterprise search or Blog search requires the deployment of more sophisticated ranking models, approaches and paradigms, as well as a shift in the evaluation methodology. Using and citing the papers discussed in the course, describe how information retrieval systems and ranking models have evolved over the past few years, and discuss the modeling problems and issues that need to be addressed when tackling modern information retrieval applications, as well as the practical considerations that need to be taken into account before deploying modern retrieval systems in real scenarios. In the course of your essay, and assuming that you are building a service like Google News, illustrate your answer using this application area.

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Software Engineering
2. In What Makes Good Research in Software Engineering, Mary Shaw characterizes software engineering research in terms of the sorts of research questions asked, the results generated and the type of validation provided. She claims that software engineering research strategies consist of particular combinations of types of question, result and validation. Using the papers in the course collection as your raw material, consider the validity of Shaws claims described in the previous paragraph. Can distinct research strategies be identified based on the question/result/validation framework? If so, does this way of thinking about software engineering research help in its critical analysis, evaluation and/or formulation? In the course of your answer you should draw on a variety of papers, making clear their research question(s), results and form of validation and comparing and contrasting the papers with each other. If you wish, you may describe Shaws paper in more detail to make clearer the claims that she is making.

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Information Security
3. One view of information security is that it is a technical matter and consists of choosing the right algorithms and protocols. Another view is that it is a human factors issue and putting effective security management structures in place is most important. However, the costs and benefits of security are also important. Discuss how economics impacts all aspects of information security. The papers discussed in the course consider many aspects of the economics of information security from several different viewpoints. Your perspective in writing this essay is that of an external consultant advising a company that their information security costs are worthwhile. Your essay should reference the papers in the course collection to back up the recommendations that you make.

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