Research Log Entry
What question did you try to answer?
-What types of volcanoes are in Hawaii?
What search engine or engines did you use?
-Google.com
What search terms did you use?
-Volcanoes in Hawaii and volcanoes in Hawaii or active in Hawaii
How many results did you get when you entered your terms?
-1,330,000
How many did you get when you used OR?
-986,000
Which set was bigger?
-Volcanoes in Hawaii
Can you figure out why?
-Only because there are less words.
What questions did you use to evaluate your results?
-What types of volcanoes in Hawaii?
What conclusion did you draw about the value of the site and why?
-It named all the volcanoes that are in Hawaii!
What questions came into your mind that you could use to continue your exploration?
-Why are there un named volcanoes that are not specified?
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Something's not right here. First, you didn't use the same search.
ReplyDeleteVolcanoes in Hawaii
is very different from
Volcanoes Hawaii
which is the phrase that would automatically supply the AND Boolean operator
So you can't compare Volcanoes in Hawaii with Volcanoes or Hawaii and end up with comparable test results. I did this search today in Google and here's what I found:
Volcanoes Hawaii
6,800,000 results
Volcanoes OR Hawaii
983,000,000 results
Clearly, OR retrieves more results because they contain web sites that include the word volcano and web sites that include the word Hawaii and web sites that include both. With the first search, both the word Volcanoes and the word Hawaii must be in the web site somewhere.
Do you see how that works? Also, as a side note, OR must be in capital letters or the system treats it as another search word.
What I wanted was for you to be able to see that OR IS MORE by doing a little experiment yourself.
Your evaluation should be based on one of the C.A.R.D.I.O. evaluation techniques. You wrote "What types of volcanoes in Hawaii?" which is your original question, not evaluation. Please review the "evaluating web sources" page on the class wiki.
Your question is a good one.