Facing the cold start problem in recommender systems

Lika, B., Kolomvatsos, K. and Hadjiefthymiades, S. (2014) Facing the cold start problem in recommender systems. Expert Systems with Applications, 41(4), pp. 2065-2073. (doi: 10.1016/j.eswa.2013.09.005)

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Abstract

A recommender system (RS) aims to provide personalized recommendations to users for specific items (e.g., music, books). Popular techniques involve content-based (CB) models and collaborative filtering (CF) approaches. In this paper, we deal with a very important problem in RSs: The cold start problem. This problem is related to recommendations for novel users or new items. In case of new users, the system does not have information about their preferences in order to make recommendations. We propose a model where widely known classification algorithms in combination with similarity techniques and prediction mechanisms provide the necessary means for retrieving recommendations. The proposed approach incorporates classification methods in a pure CF system while the use of demographic data help for the identification of other users with similar behavior. Our experiments show the performance of the proposed system through a large number of experiments. We adopt the widely known dataset provided by the GroupLens research group. We reveal the advantages of the proposed solution by providing satisfactory numerical results in different experimental scenarios.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Kolomvatsos, Dr Kostas
Authors: Lika, B., Kolomvatsos, K., and Hadjiefthymiades, S.
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
Journal Name:Expert Systems with Applications
Publisher:Elsevier
ISSN:0957-4174
ISSN (Online):1873-6793
Published Online:16 September 2013

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