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Date November 2019 Marks available 3 Reference code 19N.2.HL.TZ0.12
Level HL Paper 2 Time zone no time zone
Command term Describe Question number 12 Adapted from N/A

Question

An international organization, OBI, has three offices in Europe, see Figure 7.

Figure 7: The location of OBI’s offices in Europe

[Source: adapted (recoloured, cropped and annotated) Europe Map by Erin Dill 0, www.freevector.com.
Under copyright and CC 4.0 licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)]

 

Office A and Office B report to Office C, the head office.

Office A and Office B collaborate on many projects. Office C is not involved in the collaboration between Office A and Office B.

OBI has projects that involve large numbers of contributors from all over the world. These projects are managed by OBI staff in Office A.

The contributors often include non-text based information.

Draw a directed graph based on the scenario.

[2]
a.

Describe the role of graph theory in determining the connectivity of the World Wide Web.

[3]
b.

Outline two issues that may arise from using a non-text based search.

[4]
c.

OBI has decided to gather information for one project by utilizing collective intelligence.

Evaluate this decision.

[5]
d.

Markscheme

Award [2 max].
Award [1] for bi-directional arrow between A & B.
Award [1] for uni-directional arrow between A & C as well as B & C.

a.

Award [3 max].
Connectivity is a basic concept in Graph Theory. Graph theory can be used to model or analyse the nature of the connectivity on a selected area, the web;
In World Wide Web, each web page is represented by vertex/node;
The hyper links between web pages are represented by edges/lines in the graph;
Arrows would indicate the direction of the hyperlinks (1-way / 2-way);
In Graph Theory, a graph is said to be connected if there is a path between every pair of vertex. From every vertex to any other vertex, there should be some path to traverse. That is called the connectivity of a graph;
Similar concept is used in connectivity of World Wide Web, where each vertex representing a type of web page is connected to any other vertex representing other kind of web pages;

b.

Award [4 max].
Multimedia are assigned meta-tags;
If the appropriate tag is not assigned, the media will not appear in the search;

Searched by image similarity;
Google search the web using the image inputted by the user;

Non-text based searches are more difficult;
Because there a no specific content to search for;

Fewer search engines support multimedia searches;
Therefore the search engine may not be as efficient;

Mark as [2] and [2].

c.

Award [5 max].
Advantages of using collective intelligence [2 max]
Collective intelligence costs significantly less per unit / pro rata than hiring a professional;
A single task is being worked on simultaneously by numerous individuals so it can be completed much more rapidly than using a single person;
It allows access (maybe part time or at very short notice) to a large number of contributors for specific events or tasks;

Disadvantages of using collective intelligence [2 max]
It may be hard to ensure sufficient quality control occurs as collective intelligence is a very deregulated environment;
It may be hard to verify the originality of the work, or which work was originally completed by who;
There may be many ideas, but it may be difficult evaluate each idea thoroughly as there may be a lack of centralised planning and/or a lack of a clearly defined hierarchy;

Conclusions [1 max]
Collective intelligence can help organizations in solving a problem in certain contexts;
These may include where there is a need to provide information quickly such as a health related requirement, or where the final information is not critical to the wellbeing of others, for example a site such as Wikipedia;

d.

Examiners report

Graph theory is quite a complex area of the course. Many correctly sketched a diagram.

a.

Answers to (b) were quite vague and did not go further that identifying the function of nodes and links.

b.

Most candidates identified at least one of the reasons.

c.

Most candidates gained marks here, particularly in identifying both the diversity of opinions that could be gathered and the difficulties involved in analysing them.

d.

Syllabus sections

Option C: Web science » C.5 Analysing the web
Option C: Web science

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