Computing Recommendations with Collaborative Filtering
Neal Lathia · IGI Global eBooks · 2009
Recommender systems generate personalized content for each of its users, by relying on an assumption reflected in the interaction between people: those who have had similar opinions in the past will continue sharing the same tastes in the future. Collaborative filtering, the dominant algorithm underlying recommender systems, uses a model of its users, contained within profiles, in order to guide what interactions should be allowed, and how these interactions translate first into predicted ratings, and then into recommendations. In this chapter, the authors introduce the various approaches that have been adopted when designing collaborative filtering algorithms, and how they differ from one another in the way they make use of the available user information. They then explore how these systems are evaluated, and highlight a number of problems that prevent recommendations from being suitably computed, before looking at the how current trends in recommender system research are projecting towards future developments.