Pedagogic challenges in Information Retrieval – teaching mathematics to Postgraduate Information Science students

Understanding of mathematics is needed to underpin the process of search, either explicitly with Exact Match (Boolean logic, adjacency) or implicitly with Best match natural language search. In this paper I outline some pedagogical challenges in teaching mathematics for information retrieval to postgraduate information science students. The aim is to take these challenges either found by experience or in the literature, to identify both theoretical and practical ideas in order to improve the delivery of the material and positively affect the learning of the target audience. Some ideas are put forward to resolve these issues and to promote discussion.