Prof. Builds Customized Search Software

Open source web encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has inspired a Harvard professor to build software that generates a reading list of material online, tailored to a person’s interests.

The professor, Alexander Wissner-Gross, says he wondered about a way to automate a reading list as he prepared a list for his course, and noted similarities between his course’s structure and the way information is connected by links in Wikipedia. This prompted him to experiment with algorithms to find the most important pages and how they ranked for a particular topic.

He then developed an effective algorithm, similar to that used by Google, which assesses page popularity by evaluating the number of other pages that link to it and also the popularity of those pages. He also developed another algorithm that assessed the number of links needed to get from one article to another, also produced good results with shorter lists.

Wissner-Gross said the software could help researchers who want to quickly brush up on a particular topic, by selecting reading material that is best suited to their expertise. He has also developed a portable version, which uses a copy of Wikipedia downloaded to an iPod, and is testing the software himself.

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