Tagungsbeiträge

Users and Noise: The Magic Barrier of Recommender Systems

AutorAlan Said, Brijnesh Johannes Jain, Sascha Narr, Till Plumbaum
QuelleProceedings of the 20th International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization (UMAP '12) 
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Recommender systems are crucial components of most commercial websites to keep users satisfied and to increase revenue. Thus, a lot of effort is made to improve recommendation accuracy. But when is the best possible performance of the recommender reached? The magic barrier, refers to some unknown level of prediction accuracy a recommender system can attain. The magic barrier reveals whether there is still room for improving prediction accuracy or indicates that further improvement is meaningless. In this work, we present a mathematical characterization of the magic barrier based on the assumption that user ratings are afflicted with inconsistencies - noise. In a case study with a commercial movie recommender, we investigate the inconsistencies of the user ratings and estimate the magic barrier in order to assess the actual quality of the recommender system.