Hi everyone! My name is Chelsea Okon, and I will be presenting my MAT 480 seminar on Wednesday March 24th at 2:10. To join, please use the Zoom link that will be provided in an email. I hope you can attend! Here is a quick introduction as to what I will cover in my presentation:
What day of the week is Christmas on this year? Find me the best recipe for a birthday cake. Millions of results pop up in mere fractions of a second. Where would we be today if it wasn’t for the Google search engine? The Google search feature plays such a prominent role in daily life that “google” has officially become a verb, being included in the most prominent English dictionaries. As crazy as it is to imagine, once upon a time, there was no such thing as “googling” something. The only Internet search algorithms of the time were solely text-based, which led to very frustrating results.
Luckily for us, two students at Stanford University recognized this problem, and came up with a solution. They created PageRank, an algorithm that assigns each web page a rank, and then displays the results according to their rank. Who would have thought that a mathematical algorithm would have led to the multi-billion tech giant we know (and love) today? Each page’s rank is calculated based on the number and authority of other web pages that provide a link to it. In my presentation, I will be demonstrating how this algorithm works, and provide simplified examples as to how a web page’s rank is calculated. I will also explain a typical problem that can be encountered, and how the algorithm accounts for and fixes it. Although many other factors have begun to play a role in Google’s ranking of web pages (in particular paid advertising), a version of PageRank is still utilized by Google today. Having knowledge of search engines and ranking systems in general is a very useful skill, particularly for businesses. I will discuss some of these prominent applications of ranking systems.
Having prior knowledge of matrix properties, dynamical systems, as well as linear algebra would be beneficial, however having these skills is not necessary to still enjoy the presentation. I really hope that you will attend my seminar, and leave feeling as though you learned something new and interesting!
This was a very informative presentation. The math going into the page rank algorithm was interesting and it shows why the system worked so well until it started to get abused. I want to add that I started to have a few questions on the presentation such as what happened to page rank, but by the end of the presentation, you wound up answering the questions I had.
Hi Chelsea! This was a really great presentation. The delivery of the information was done in such a way that you both created a narrative and weaved the mathematics in at the same time. I especially liked and appreciated how you went into details at the end with conclusions on how to reach a broader market in e-commerce. Overall, very interesting and well-done presentation. Awesome job!
I never really thought about page rank and google results popping up on different pages so quickly. I always used to think that the best links were always on the first page. You presented your information very clearly and kept it interesting throughout.
Great job on your presentation. I found your presentation very interesting. It made me realize how I do not know much about the things I use on a daily basis, like Google search. If you were to ask me how I thought Google ranked its pages, I probably would have said by the number of times that search word appears in the link. After your example about creating a site and writing Canisius College a million times, I realized how dumb my answer would have been. So thank you for enlightening me. I also agree with Dr. Kahng that it’s impressive that you did all the research and work without the help of a professor. During your presentation, it was really obvious that you had a clear and thorough understanding about the topic. Good luck on your next talk. Looking forward to it.
The amount of work you put into your presentation was trivial. Did a very good job explaining why one websites page may have a higher rank and others that would have lower page ranks; which part of it is based on the amount of credible (for lack of better, don’t remember the diction you used) links that are going into and exiting from the page. I really enjoyed the part where you mentioned we should check with words and logical to think about if the numbers we are getting seem to make sense. I remember when you were talking about multiplying by powers of some constant (I think it was a matrix) I began how I would describe it in words. It seems like the process of copying something by itself began to get us closer to the equilibrium. When it was copied say 100 times it arrived at a different value than the value you had when you first starting copying.
Its fun to learn about some of the way computer algorithms were because they are based of something and so it seems like there is always away to beat a computer if you know the algorithm it is based off of. Theoretically if you knew the exact algorithm that google used for its page ranking system one could use it too there advantage and bring ones page to the top of the ranks. Of course they probably rotate which ones they use so it is always changing, which makes more difficult to be sure where algorithm is being used and when.
Hey Chelsea! Great job on your presentation. I found your presentation very helpful and interesting. With the effort that you put into this presentation, I give you my praise. It was well organized and well researched, it was the first time that I heard the google PageRank Algorithm but it was google PageRank that invented lots of cool searches browser that what I learned from you. Thank you for sharing your ideas with us and looking forward to your research and success in the near future.
This was probably the most interesting topic of any math seminar talk that I’ve seen (sorry, everyone else). I think I learned about PageRank a LONG time ago but it was just an overview and definitely didn’t include any math. It was really cool to learn about the mathematics that makes, or rather ~made~, perhaps the most popular website run. Thank you for this.