Learning users' interests in a market-based recommender system

Wei, Y. Z., Moreau, L. and Jennings, N. R. (2004) Learning users' interests in a market-based recommender system. 5th International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning, Exeter, United Kingdom. 25 - 27 Aug 2004. pp. 833-840 .

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Recommender systems are widely used to cope with the problem of information overload and, consequently, many recommendation methods have been developed. However, no one technique is best for all users in all situations. To combat this, we have previously developed a market-based recommender system that allows multiple agents (each representing a different recommendation method or system) to compete with one another to present their best recommendations to the user. Our marketplace thus coordinates multiple recommender agents and ensures only the best recommendations are presented. To do this effectively, however, each agent needs to learn the users’ interests and adapt its recommending behaviour accordingly. To this end, in this paper, we develop a reinforcement learning and Boltzmann exploration strategy that the recommender agents can use for these tasks. We then demonstrate that this strategy helps the agents to effectively obtain information about the users’ interests which, in turn, speeds up the market convergence and enables the system to rapidly highlight the best recommendations.

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