How to Google

[owlice]

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[Chris Peterson]

Search skills tend to be very poor. It's something I teach in the middle school classroom, mainly by creating contests: offering a series of complex questions (e.g. "What was the occupation of the father of the President who was famous for his red hair") and the winner being the first to get all the answers. I teach some of the Google-specific keywords, but mostly focus on Boolean expressions, which are applicable to all search tools.

[Beyond]

Boolean expressions I wonder how long it would take me to find the definition of that, IF i were so inclined.

[rstevenson]

Boolean expressions I wonder how long it would take me to find the definition of that, IF i were so inclined.

A few seconds, via Google.
Here, from Webopedia, is the cleanest description I found...

Boolean expression
An expression that results in a value of either TRUE or FALSE. For example, the expression
2 < 5 (2 is less than 5)
is a Boolean expression because the result is TRUE. All expressions that contain relational operators , such as the less than sign (<), are Boolean. The operators -- AND, OR, XOR, NOR, and NOT -- are Boolean operators.
Boolean expressions are also called comparison expressions, conditional expressions, and relational expressions.

Rob

[Ann]

Search skills tend to be very poor. It's something I teach in the middle school classroom, mainly by creating contests: offering a series of complex questions (e.g. "What was the occupation of the father of the President who was famous for his red hair") and the winner being the first to get all the answers. I teach some of the Google-specific keywords, but mostly focus on Boolean expressions, which are applicable to all search tools.

Let's see how I was doing.

I googled President and red hair. I got a list of redhead presidents, which I decided was too long. I got another site instead, Famous leaders with red hair. This one said that Andrew Jackson was famous for his red hair, which had apparently turned gray by the time he became US President at age 61. I thought that Jackson was a possibility, but the fact that his hair had turned gray by the time when he became president made him slightly less likely.

The site, Famous leaders with red hair, showed two other red-haired presidents, Thomas Jefferson and Calvin Coolidge. I decided that since Thomas Jefferson is so much more famous than Calvin Coolidge, he was more likely to be the president you asked for. Besides, there was a picture of him with a lot of red hair. Calvin Coolidge had a lot less hair. I googled Jefferson, and found that his father, Peter Jefferson, was a planter and surveyor. I googled Andrew Jackson too, and found that his father had died at age 29.

I decided to check Calvin Coolidge after all, to see if his hair was specially mentioned. I found this about his hair:

While Grace was watering flowers outside the school one day in 1903, she happened to look up at the open window of Robert N. Weir's boardinghouse and caught a glimpse of Calvin Coolidge shaving in front of a mirror with nothing on but long underwear and a hat.[17] Coolidge later explained that he wore the hat to keep his unruly red hair out of his eyes while shaving.

That was interesting, and Coolidge was the only president of the three I checked whose hair was sufficiently interesting to be mentioned in the presentation of him by Wikipedia. His father was well-known, too. Wikipedia wrote:

Coolidge Senior engaged in many occupations, and ultimately enjoyed a statewide reputation as a prosperous farmer, storekeeper and public servant; he farmed, taught school, ran a local store, served in the Vermont House of Representatives and the Vermont Senate, and held various local offices including justice of the peace and tax collector.

Coolidge senior possibly held too many jobs to be described as a man with one occupation. But I'm going to pick him anyway and say that Calvin Coolidge's father served in the Vermont House of Representatives and was a justice of the peace, tax collector, store owner, farmer and teacher.

How did I do, Chris?

Ann

[Ann]

Okay. I changed my mind. I googled Martin van Buren, who was mentioned in the first list of red-haired American Presidents.

http://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/dec11/fox.html wrote about van Buren:
Known as “The Red Fox of Kinderhook” for his red hair and as a nod to his birthplace of Kinderhook, N.Y., Martin Van Buren was the eighth president of the United States and the first born on American soil.

So it was him, then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Van_Buren wrote:
His father Abraham Van Buren (1737–1817) was a farmer, the owner of six slaves,[6] and a tavern-keeper in Kinderhook.

Ann

[owlice]

Search skills tend to be very poor. It's something I teach in the middle school classroom, mainly by creating contests: offering a series of complex questions (e.g. "What was the occupation of the father of the President who was famous for his red hair") and the winner being the first to get all the answers. I teach some of the Google-specific keywords, but mostly focus on Boolean expressions, which are applicable to all search tools.

I thought this part of the poster was a nice quick summary of how to search; a good reminder!

Click to view larger image

And I nearly posted just that, but eh! It's a good poster overall, so there it is. A lot of people don't know how rich Google searching tools are.

[MargaritaMc]

It is a SPLENDID poster, Owlice! I have explored it minutely. And saved it onto my hard drive (actually, my computer's hard drive )

I loved Ann's bit of research - and would very much like to know how Chris would go about it.
And how to use Boolean expressions in a worked example... Is that possible?
Chris?
Rob?

[MargaritaMc]

I just tried this in Google
"President of United States"AND"famous for his red hair"AND"father's occupation"
But got this response from Google

No results found for "President of United States"AND"famous for his red hair"AND"father's occupation".
Results for President of United StatesANDfamous for his red hairANDfathers occupation (without quotes)

The Google info poster seemed to specify the use of quotation marks, so ... I'm puzzled.

When I tried again, omitting the words 'United States', Google returned this,

Your search - PresidentAND"famous for his red hair"AND"father's occupation" - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Try fewer keywords.

What didn't I do correctly?
M

[Ann]

Goodness, I had to edit that long post of mine. I happened to write this about Calvin Coolidge's father,

Calvin Coolidge's father was served in the Vermont House of Representatives

Goodness me, I hope not!!!

Click to view full size image

President and Mrs. Cleveland host a State Dinner
at the White House for the Diplomatic Corps, January 20, 1888.
White House Historical Association (White House Collection).

Dinner at the White House on January 20, 1988.

I sure hope they didn't serve Calvin Coolidge's father!!!

(And I hope they didn't serve him in the Vermont House of Representatives, either!!)


Ann

[Ann]

I just tried this in Google
"President of United States"AND"famous for his red hair"AND"father's occupation"
But got this response from Google

No results found for "President of United States"AND"famous for his red hair"AND"father's occupation".
Results for President of United StatesANDfamous for his red hairANDfathers occupation (without quotes)

The Google info poster seemed to specify the use of quotation marks, so ... I'm puzzled.

When I tried again, omitting the words 'United States', Google returned this,

Your search - PresidentAND"famous for his red hair"AND"father's occupation" - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Try fewer keywords.

What didn't I do correctly?
M

Here's my suggestion. Don't give Google too many search words to ponder at once.

In this case, it might be a good idea to start with the words President and red hair. There are other presidents than the ones in the United States, but Google is almost sure to start with the American Presidents. If you write President red hair (and I didn't even use any quotation marks), Google will give you a list of red-haired American Presidents. Now that you have a list to choose from, you may, if you so wish, google the names of the red-haired Presidents plus their red hair. I realized I had found the correct president when I googled Martin van Buren red hair. Google gave me this:

Known as “The Red Fox of Kinderhook” for his red hair and as a nod to his birthplace of Kinderhook, N.Y., Martin Van Buren was the eighth president of the...

He was known for his red hair, i.e., he was famous for it. He was even called "The Red Fox of Kinderhook" because of his red hair. He was obviously famous for it.

When I had found the correct president, I just asked Wikipedia for information about him. I simply googled "Martin van Buren", and the appropriate Wikipedia article immediately appeared. Wikipedia told me about his father, too.

So my advice is, don't write too many search words!

Ann

[Chris Peterson]

Okay. I changed my mind. I googled Martin van Buren, who was mentioned in the first list of red-haired American Presidents.

Van Buren was the intended president. Your other answers would not be wrong, but I think Van Buren is the best choice, as you seem to have discovered as well.

In the classroom, one goal is speed, so getting to the answer with as few searches as possible, and with searches that result in good material near the top, are key.

[Chris Peterson]

I just tried this in Google
"President of United States"AND"famous for his red hair"AND"father's occupation"
But got this response from Google

No results found for "President of United States"AND"famous for his red hair"AND"father's occupation".
Results for President of United StatesANDfamous for his red hairANDfathers occupation (without quotes)

What didn't I do correctly?

Did you do it exactly as shown here, with no spaces surrounding the ANDs? If so, that's part of the problem. Also, with Google there's no need to use AND since this is the implied operator between search terms.

More generally, quotes are very powerful (and underused), but you have to be careful. When you put something in quotes, the search engine is going to look for that expression exactly, so even trivial shifts in grammar or word choice will result in misses. So generally you only want to tie the concepts together, not the connector words. While searching on red hair will yield a multitude of false leads, "red hair" will tie those together as a single concept and limit the returns.

The goal of the classroom contest is to get as many correct answers as quickly as possible. One skill is to recognize over-specified searches. In all likelihood, trying to figure out the occupation of the father of a famous red-haired president with a single search expression is going to be inefficient. My search strategy was this:

First search: us president "red hair" (Google generally ignores letter case and punctuation, but use possessive apostrophes if necessary)

Near the top of the result list is a likely useful Wikipedia article containing a list of red haired presidents, as well as several occurrences of Van Buren's name in the summaries. I recommend going first to Wikipedia articles in most cases, as they are usually both accurate and detail rich. So looking at the Wikipedia article, and scanning for Van Buren, I almost instantly see his name. A click takes me to his Wikipedia page, and page search (control-F in most browsers) on father takes me immediately to a sentence giving his father's occupation as farmer and tavern keeper. Done.

[MargaritaMc]

Thank you, Ann and Chris.

So,
1. No need to use AND in Google.
2. If I were to use AND put spaces - I had assumed that NO spaces was the correct usage
3. Do the search in stages, homing in on the detail needed.
4. Avoid superfluous words (!)
5. Use quotation marks judiciously and with care.

Re Boolean - how and when are NOT and OR used? A glimmer of memory tells me that they are two operators.
Are there others?
Margarita

[rstevenson]

Re Boolean - how and when are NOT and OR used? A glimmer of memory tells me that they are two operators.
Are there others?

There's also XOR and NOR, but they're odd ones to grasp. To really "get it" you may have to start thinking in terms of binary math. However...

I don't usually use any Boolean operators in Google. I used to use them a lot back before the web, when I had to search very large databases with nothing more than a command-line interface. But some time ago a few people became extremely rich by figuring out how to make search engines, and how to make them yield good useful results. (One young man from around here had a net worth, on paper and during the dot-com bubble, of about a quarter billion dollars, because he was part of a team that developed some of the fundamental algorithms of searching. I hope he diversified while he had it!) Since then I haven't bothered with Boolean operators much. I use essentially the same strategy that Chris uses.

Rob

[bystander]

There is also the advanced search option, which is very easy to use.

http://www.google.com/advanced_search

[MargaritaMc]

The only reason I asked about Boolean was that Chris had said that he teaches them to his students,

Search skills tend to be very poor. <...> I teach some of the Google-specific keywords, but mostly focus on Boolean expressions, which are applicable to all search tools.

I remembered using something based on Boolean operators with my very first CD-ROM Encyclopaedia Britannica (18 years ago?) So I asked if and how they are used, within searches, now.

Margarita

[MargaritaMc]

There is also the advanced search option, which is very easy to use.

http://www.google.com/advanced_search

Helpful. This option is tucked away behind the settings icon on the mobile site, which is the one that I get funneled to as I'm using a tablet, rather than being in the more obvious "More" list.
M