The Math Behind PageRank

anaesthetica writes "The American Mathematical Society is featuring an article with an in-depth explanation of the type of mathematical operations that power PageRank. Because about 95% of the text on the 25 billion pages indexed by Google consist of the same 10,000 words, determining relevance requires an extremely sophisticated set of methods. And because the links constituting the web are constantly changing and updating, the relevance of pages needs to be recalculated on a continuous basis."

Comments

Re:PageRank doesn't seem to be based on keywords

[pilkul]

I love slashdot fools that post as quickly as possible to have a better chance of being moderated up, but they don't RTFA and are way, way off.

Re:PageRank doesn't seem to be based on keywords

[pilkul]

Now I'm moderated troll for pointing out the parent was blatantly wrong? The reason the 95% percent word commonality was pointed out in the article introduction was to go on to explain why keyword search is basically ineffective and PageRank is based on links!

Re:PageRank doesn't seem to be based on keywords

[Anonymous Coward]

I love slashdot fools that moderate, but don't RTFA and are way, way off.

Re:PageRank doesn't seem to be based on keywords

[wall0159]

>> Now I'm moderated troll for pointing out the parent was blatantly wrong?

Hmm.. A lot of people haven't figured out that expressing an opinion with authority/conviction doesn't make it correct.

James Kim

[Anonymous Coward]

James Kim dies; Slashdot continues to reject stories about him. Refused to help out at all and draw attention and now even refuses to report his death, as every other similar site goes ahead and pays their respects. Hopefully Taco or someone doesn't get lost in the wilderness, because I don't imagine they'd be treated well after this.

Re:James Kim

[Anonymous Coward]

I must confess I am a bit perplexed at this myself. Digg in particular has had a lot of stories about the situation, and it would seem to me that Slashdot would want to help draw attention to the story in some kind of attempt to help because he is in the same line of work as them. I'm not sure if it belongs on Slashdot or not, but since when has that stopped the "editors" before? I mean we got an article when somebody in the open source world got hit while riding a bike, and another article when someone died in a car accident. Granted software development and technology magazine editor aren't exactly the same, but they are kind of in the same general field of computer technology. On the surface it seems a little bit like a double standard or something because the guy wasn't involved in open source software. I don't know; it just doesn't sit well with me how much coverage this got on virtually every technology website EXCEPT Slashdot.

Re:James Kim

[Anonymous Coward]

Likewise. Unfortunately, Slashdot is set up in a way to allow no discussion of their decisions (long live the vanguard!). Multiple stories have been rejected, which is not a personal vendetta, but I can only imagine how many countless others have had their stories submitted and rejected. There is no way the editors were not aware of the importance of this and the fact that Digg, Endgadget and Lifehacker, to name a few, have been keeping readers who, judging by the sheer number of comments, have been very concerned for James Kim, is jarring. The editors of Slashdot need to speak up.

Send email to a dead man?

[djupedal]

James Kim dies;

Respects..?? The CNET site is still littered with active email links to Kim - let's talk about that if you want to worry over respect or lack thereof.

Besides, the guy's claim to fame is a 24 month history of being paid to write about MP3 players. In terms of respect, how does that rate? Is the Gov. supposed to run flags at the capitol at 1/2 mast for a week or commission a wall of dead iPods on the mall, or what? You want /. to go dark for 24 hours, is that it?

Sorry, but you may need to re-calibrate your respect meter.

Re:Send email to a dead man?

[treeves]

I don't have any Mod points right now, but isn't a reply to an Offtopic post pretty much automatically offtopic? Go ahead and mod me Offtopic, I'll consider that an affirmative answer.

Re:Send email to a dead man?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about the governor. He was an editor of a tech web site. This is a geek website. Respect for your own. I don't expect a website dedicate to dog ownership to do the same, but if CmdrTaco got lost in the woods and died, we sure as fuck should see, for example, some respect paid on Engadget (whom, incidentally, paid their respect to Kim).

In Poor Taste

[Reverend99]

James Kim
1971-2006
From Crave to Grave.

Re:10,000 words

[The Zon]

What if I welcomed our (x) overlords? Or asked if it runs Linux? Would I be hilarious then?

Looking at the moderation on posts I've made, I can tell a couple of things. One, because of the frequent "Funny" mods, I can tell that there are at least a few people who were amused by the posts, which is, of course, the point. Two, because of the sporadic "Overrated" mods, I can tell that there are some other people out there who are taking jokes way too seriously. If you don't find a post funny, you shouldn't take it like it's some sort of personal affront. People who mod a joke that intends to be funny "Overrated" are really wasting their mod points, in my opinion. Humor is subjective.

Incidentally, thanks for the signature.

Check out Google's wrongdoing!

[CensorsAreBadPeople]

http://malfy.org/