Harry tackles evaluating search engines especially the slippery concept of relevance.

Evaluating Search Engines for Chemistry - 2005

SUNY Oneonta, Oneonta, NY

pencehe@oneonta.edu

 

"... As noted in a previous article in this series, there are at least three important criteria that should be used to evaluate search engines: comprehensiveness, currency, and relevance. Comprehensiveness, the measure of what fraction of the total web the search engine index actually includes, is particularly important for chemists, because they are often looking for unusual information that may not be included in smaller search engine indices. Currency measures how often the search engine revisits sites to determine whether or not there have been any changes. This is important to all web searches, since failure to revisit sites allows dead links to be included in the index. The final important criterion is relevancy. Are the most useful sites listed early in the search results?

 

 

This article may take quite awhile to download if you are using a modem, if so be patient it is worth it.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger Than Life
By Ken Costello
Physical Science Department
Mesa Community College
Abstract

The realm of chemistry is so vast that most of it is either too large to see, too small to see, too fast to see, or simply not in the classroom to be seen. However, by using the often overlooked capabilities of PowerPoint, these obstacles can be overcome. The secret to getting the power out of PowerPoint is in the way you perceive PowerPoint. In this article I reveal how to perceive PowerPoint as either medicine, a magician’s hat of tricks, or a picture window. Also included are many tips and examples presented in a v