Archive for July 2007

Why Recommendations?

If you’re a user of the StyleFeeder site, you’ve likely noticed that recommendations link at the top of every page. Click on it and (if you are logged in) you will see a list of products: your recommendations. If you’ve never rated anything on StyleFeeder, your recommendations won’t be very interesting—it will simply be a […]

Genes, Features and Recommendations, Oh My!

The Music Genome Project was created seven years ago with the goal of establishing a set of characteristics (such as “Intricate Rhythms”, “Acoustic Guitar Riffs”) of music which can be used to compare and contrast music in a systematic way. These characteristics are called “genes” by the founder, Tim Westergren, but I’m going to use […]

Maximum Margin Matrix Factorization

What the…? That jumble of letters full of alliteration (abbreviated MMMF) is the foundation of the collaborative filtering algorithm we use here at StyleFeeder to provide recommendations. I didn’t invent it. That credit goes to Nathan Srebro, a fellow graduate student of mine during my time at MIT CSAIL, and Tommi Jaakkola the professor who […]