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Google-opoly

by Timothy Chartier (Davidson College), Erich Kreutzer (Davidson College), Amy Langville (College of Charleston) and Kathryn Pedings (College of Charleston)

Abstract

In this article, we will play a game, called Google-opoly, that motivates ideas of the PageRank algorithm introduced by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin and serves as a cornerstone of their search engine. PageRank is part of what leads to the ordered list of web pages when a query is entered into a search engine. If two pages are equally relevant to the text on which you are searching, why is one page listed above another? PageRank is a measure of the quality of a page and higher ranked pages appear earlier than pages of equal relevance but lower quality. How do we measure such quality? We will learn step by step on small networks and develop the algorithm through playing Google-opoly.

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Chartier, Timothy, Erich Kreutzer, Amy Langville and Kathryn Pedings, "Google-opoly," Loci (November 2009), DOI: 10.4169/loci003355



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