Recommendation Sys
Design and Evaluation of a Recommender System
INF-3981 Master’s Thesis in Computer Science
Magnus Mortensen
Faculty of Science Department of Computer Science University of Tromsø
February 5, 2007
Design and Evaluation of a Recommender System
INF-3981 Master’s Thesis in Computer Science
Magnus Mortensen
Faculty of Science Department of Computer Science University of Tromsø
February 5, 2007
Abstract
In the recent years, the Web has undergone a tremendous growth regarding both content and users. This has lead to an information overload problem in which people are finding it increasingly difficult to locate the right information at the right time. Recommender systems have been developed to address this problem, by guiding users through the big ocean of information. Until now, recommender systems have been extensively used within e-commerce and communities where items like movies, music and articles are recommended. More recently, recommender systems have been deployed in online music players, recommending music that the users probably will like. This thesis will present the design, implementation, testing and evaluation of a recommender system within the music domain, where three different approaches for producing recommendations are utilized. Testing each approach is done by first conducting live user experiments and then measure recommender precision using offline analysis. Our results show that the functionality of the recommender system is satisfactory, and that recommender precision differs for the three filtering approaches.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank his supervisor, Professor Dag Johansen, for valuable ideas, support and motivation. Many thanks to the test users. The experiment would not be possible without your help. Thanks to ˚ge Kvalnes for server support. A Thanks to the rest of the WAIF team for providing valuable input. Also thanks to FAST Search & Transfer, in particular represented by Krister
INF-3981 Master’s Thesis in Computer Science
Magnus Mortensen
Faculty of Science Department of Computer Science University of Tromsø
February 5, 2007
Design and Evaluation of a Recommender System
INF-3981 Master’s Thesis in Computer Science
Magnus Mortensen
Faculty of Science Department of Computer Science University of Tromsø
February 5, 2007
Abstract
In the recent years, the Web has undergone a tremendous growth regarding both content and users. This has lead to an information overload problem in which people are finding it increasingly difficult to locate the right information at the right time. Recommender systems have been developed to address this problem, by guiding users through the big ocean of information. Until now, recommender systems have been extensively used within e-commerce and communities where items like movies, music and articles are recommended. More recently, recommender systems have been deployed in online music players, recommending music that the users probably will like. This thesis will present the design, implementation, testing and evaluation of a recommender system within the music domain, where three different approaches for producing recommendations are utilized. Testing each approach is done by first conducting live user experiments and then measure recommender precision using offline analysis. Our results show that the functionality of the recommender system is satisfactory, and that recommender precision differs for the three filtering approaches.
v
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank his supervisor, Professor Dag Johansen, for valuable ideas, support and motivation. Many thanks to the test users. The experiment would not be possible without your help. Thanks to ˚ge Kvalnes for server support. A Thanks to the rest of the WAIF team for providing valuable input. Also thanks to FAST Search & Transfer, in particular represented by Krister