{"id":{"repo_id":"mit","oai_identifier":"oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37573"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/mit/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37573","repository":{"repo_id":"mit","name":"MIT","base_url":"https://dspace.mit.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Google distance analysis of the MIT curriculum","abstract":"The MIT curriculum has traditionally been organized into Departments and Schools, or groups of Departments. This influences degree titles and their requirements, subject listings seen by students and professors, and more. But subjects, Departments and Schools are not systematically analyzed or organized based on the knowledge they cover. The system built mined a subset of Institute subjects, taken from OpenCourseWare, for key topics, and performed Google searches on those terms. By composing keyword search result vectors for each subject, scores can be calculated between all pairs of subjects. These scores were used by an MDS layout algorithm and a Hierarchical Clustering algorithm to suggest two new organizations each for Department 6 (E.E. and C.S.) and for the MIT Departments into Schools. Convex hulls in MDS graphs of Department 6, colored based on classes a student has taken, are also used to predict new departments the student will take.","abstract_html":"The MIT curriculum has traditionally been organized into Departments and Schools, or groups of Departments. This influences degree titles and their requirements, subject listings seen by students and professors, and more. But subjects, Departments and Schools are not systematically analyzed or organized based on the knowledge they cover. The system built mined a subset of Institute subjects, taken from OpenCourseWare, for key topics, and performed Google searches on those terms. By composing keyword search result vectors for each subject, scores can be calculated between all pairs of subjects. These scores were used by an MDS layout algorithm and a Hierarchical Clustering algorithm to suggest two new organizations each for Department 6 (E.E. and C.S.) and for the MIT Departments into Schools. Convex hulls in MDS graphs of Department 6, colored based on classes a student has taken, are also used to predict new departments the student will take.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Dugan, Casey (Casey A.)"],"institution":"Massachusetts Institute of Technology","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":"Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.","school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":["Hal Abelson."],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2006,"date_issued":"2006","date_published":"2006","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:21:29Z","subjects":["Electrical Engineering and Computer Science."],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission."],"rights_urls":["http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582"],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37573","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier.uri"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.advisor","label":"Advisor","values":["Hal Abelson."]},{"key":"dc:contributor.department","label":"Department","values":["Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science."]},{"key":"dc:contributor.other","label":"Dc Contributor Other","values":["Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission."]},{"key":"dc:rights.uri","label":"Rights URI","values":["http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.uri","label":"Identifier URI","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37573"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2006.","Includes bibliographical references (leaf 50)."]},{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["The MIT curriculum has traditionally been organized into Departments and Schools, or groups of Departments. This influences degree titles and their requirements, subject listings seen by students and professors, and more. But subjects, Departments and Schools are not systematically analyzed or organized based on the knowledge they cover. The system built mined a subset of Institute subjects, taken from OpenCourseWare, for key topics, and performed Google searches on those terms. By composing keyword search result vectors for each subject, scores can be calculated between all pairs of subjects. These scores were used by an MDS layout algorithm and a Hierarchical Clustering algorithm to suggest two new organizations each for Department 6 (E.E. and C.S.) and for the MIT Departments into Schools. 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Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2006.","Includes bibliographical references (leaf 50)."],"dc:description.abstract":["The MIT curriculum has traditionally been organized into Departments and Schools, or groups of Departments. This influences degree titles and their requirements, subject listings seen by students and professors, and more. But subjects, Departments and Schools are not systematically analyzed or organized based on the knowledge they cover. The system built mined a subset of Institute subjects, taken from OpenCourseWare, for key topics, and performed Google searches on those terms. By composing keyword search result vectors for each subject, scores can be calculated between all pairs of subjects. These scores were used by an MDS layout algorithm and a Hierarchical Clustering algorithm to suggest two new organizations each for Department 6 (E.E. and C.S.) and for the MIT Departments into Schools. 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