Course Announcement: Seek and Find: Search strategies in space and time

Informatics I400/400H/I590 (cross-listed in Cognitive Science)

Spring Semester 2008

Meeting times: Tu/Th 2:30-3:45 pm (3 credits)

Location: Woodburn Hall (WH) room 008

Professor: Peter M. Todd

Office Hours: M/W 2-3 pm in Psychology 369, phone 855-3914

(Other office until we move: Eigenmann Hall, Room 908, phone 856-1839)

Email: pmtodd (at) indiana.edu

Readings: Distributed in class or online

Course Description

The things we need don’t usually come to us; we have to go looking for them. People spend much of their time searching for information, resources, material goods, opportunities, and even other people. What strategies do humans (and other animals) use to decide where and how to search and when to stop searching? In this course we will explore the processes that animals use when foraging for food in the wild, that people use when foraging for information on the Web, that shoppers use when looking for a bargain (or a parking space), that applicants use when seeking a job, and that singles use when looking for a date. Students will try their hand at various search problems throughout the course, and will have the opportunity to program and analyze search strategies. We will see how optimal strategies process information from the environment to find the best option, and how heuristic rules can provide shortcuts. We will observe the emergent effects that many individuals looking for things at the same time can have on the search problem. And we will discuss how computational tools can be built using these ideas to help people do a better job at finding what they seek.

Prerequisites: junior/senior (I400) or graduate (I590) standing, and one course in psychology or decision making (or consent of instructor).  This course is intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students with broad interdisciplinary interests and backgrounds in cognitive science, informatics, psychology, statistics, cognitive anthropology, animal behavior, behavioral economics, or philosophy of mind.

Format: In most sessions, we will discuss a paper from the readings that covers a specific type of search behavior, based on questions submitted online by students.  We will also have presentations of some papers and new projects on search strategies in different domains by students.  Extra topics will be available for graduate students.

Course Topics

Searching for information, and designing systems to make this easier

Searching in time/sequential search: Mate search, economic search, shopping, job hunting

Search in space: visual search, animal foraging, area-restricted search, human foraging

Foraging simulations/models

Search in abstract spaces: Web search, foraging/shopping online, searching for research

Stopping search: switching between patches in space or in memory, giving up/moving on

Social search: searching together, searching in competition, searching social networks

Seeking and hiding: finding criminals, finding targets

Coevolution of searchers and things searched: finding parking spaces and patches

Applications: guided search with maps and clues; ant search algorithms; web search tools