Boolean Searching

or How to choose your slice of pizza at the Pizza Buffet.

Vinny Diagram’s Pizza Buffet

Toppings:• Pepperoni • Sausage • Garlic• Onion• Anchovies• Crawfish (Vinny is from New Orleans)

Boolean Operators• AND• OR• NOT

Vinny Buffet is also known for his odd figure eight shaped pizzas, because he is little careless when placing the pizzas into the oven. So, that makes finding the right slice an additional challenge.

“AND”

By using “AND” we are requiring both of the search terms (in this case – pizza toppings) to appear somewhere in the document (make that pizza).

In Vinny’s merged pizzas, it is only the middle slice we want. The one with both Pepperoni and Sausage!

“OR”

By using “OR” we are saying either of the toppings can appear somewhere on the pizza.

In Vinny’s merged pizzas any slice is okay!

“NOT”

“NOT” excludes those search terms (like anchovies) that follow it.

In Vinny’s merged pizzas we don’t want any slice of pizza that has anchovies! Just the Crawfish side please!

Let’s try Searching for articles using these Boolean operators.

• “AND”

• “OR”

• “NOT”

Questions?

This powerpoint presentation can be viewed at http://weston.fall2008.googlepages.com/home