Ask HN: Where can I learn how to build a recommender system?

48 pointsxky10y ago23 comments

I'm trying to build a recommender system for news articles. I've read about basic collaborative systems but I'm looking for something more.

Do you know of any good intros to building recommender systems?

Thanks HN!

23 comments

22 comments · 10 top-level

mystique10y ago· 3 in thread

There is a good course on coursera just for recommendation systems. Evaluation of different models is something many algorithm oriented posts don't talk about but is covered well in this course.

xkyOP10y ago

This it? https://www.coursera.org/learn/recommender-systems

mystique10y ago

Yes. I have used its material and found it helpful.

Machine learning: recommender systems and dimensionality reduction also looks good but it starts in July. If you are already familiar with dimensionality reduction techniques the first one should be enough to get you going. There are other self paced courses on dimensionality reduction on coursera too.

vr369010y ago

This is a good course for the fundamentals. Although IIRC the programming assignments aren't that great because it mostly involves plugging in their recommender system framework that was developed by one of the instructors

karolisd10y ago· 2 in thread

The book Programming Collective Intelligence has a step-by-step example of how to build a recommendation system. Highly recommended.

jfaucett10y ago

I can second this. It gives plenty of working examples and lays enough groundwork so you can dig deeper where you need to.

tmaly10y ago

I have the book sitting on my desk, but I have not read it yet. Thanks for pointing this out, I have been wanting to do something with recommendations.

Cheers

siquick10y ago· 2 in thread

Heres an outstanding answer on Stack Overflow on how to implement Collaborative Filtering in MySQL

edit: link included

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2440826/collaborative-fil...

aaossa10y ago

Where? :o It seems like you forget the url

siquick10y ago

added!

1 more reply

dserban10y ago· 2 in thread

One of the Spark-focused EdX courses[0] has a very good module on Alternating Least Squares, that will help you understand how to build recommender systems in a scalable way with Spark.

[0] https://www.edx.org/course/big-data-analysis-spark-uc-berkel...

xkyOP10y ago

This looks good but it's starting late 2016. Are there any old courses you could recommend?

dserban10y ago

[1] http://bugra.github.io/work/notes/2014-04-19/alternating-lea...

This looks like a good introduction to ALS, albeit Python/Pandas centric.

vaibkv10y ago· 1 in thread

Why don't you try and read some research papers on this topic and then decide how you would want to build your algorithm? Some links -

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...

http://insight-centre.org/sites/default/files/publications/1...

http://users.cis.fiu.edu/~taoli/pub/p125-li-sigir2011.pdf

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1303.0665v2.pdf

http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=129...

https://www.ntnu.no/wiki/download/attachments/71733389/WEBIS...

A chapter dedicated to the subject -

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds/ch9.pdf

psyklic10y ago

Here are a few more applied papers/articles:

+ Hulu: http://tech.hulu.com/blog/2011/09/19/recommendation-system/

+ Amazon: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~samir/498/Amazon-Recommendations.pdf

+ Spotify: http://www.slideshare.net/erikbern/collaborative-filtering-a...

vojta110y ago· 1 in thread

I found myself in a similar situation about year and a half ago wanting to learn recommender systems. What worked best for me was the already mentioned coursera recommender system course. Then if you can, go to RecSys conference (this year happening in fall in Boston). Then the absolute go to book for recommender systems is "Recommender systems handbook" - it has second edition that came out last year and this book covers everything from math, practical issues/architecture, to industry use cases etc.

Good luck!

xkyOP10y ago

Thanks for the encouragement :)

aaron69510y ago· 1 in thread

What you are wanting to do is very hard.

Netflix offered a million prize for a movies recommender and then proceed to not use the winning solution.

Don't underestimate it. It's a large investment, don't think of it as a side part of a project. It's the project.

I did the coursea course mentioned in the other comments and it was ok.

If I was you I'd look at some sort of hack. Using mods or something. If it was possible with software on something common like news it'd be open sourced already.

eshvk10y ago

The Pareto principle applies to a lot of Machine Learning projects. You can get surprisingly far with very simple heuristics. OP can probably tune something that works well for him. Making it work at scale for a massively different demographic is harder.

SOURCE: I work in Spotify doing music recs.

lazyant10y ago

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective-Intelligence-Bu... has a chapter on recommendation systems

xkyOP10y ago

HN delivers. Thanks for the recommendations. I decided to start with Coursera to get a lay of the land then dig deeper from there.

rajacombinator10y ago

Pretty trivial really. If you can't deduce the principles, building one from scratch may be inadvisable.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

23 comments

22 comments · 10 top-level

mystique10y ago· 3 in thread

There is a good course on coursera just for recommendation systems. Evaluation of different models is something many algorithm oriented posts don't talk about but is covered well in this course.

xkyOP10y ago

This it? https://www.coursera.org/learn/recommender-systems

mystique10y ago

Yes. I have used its material and found it helpful.

vr369010y ago

karolisd10y ago· 2 in thread

The book Programming Collective Intelligence has a step-by-step example of how to build a recommendation system. Highly recommended.

jfaucett10y ago

I can second this. It gives plenty of working examples and lays enough groundwork so you can dig deeper where you need to.

tmaly10y ago

I have the book sitting on my desk, but I have not read it yet. Thanks for pointing this out, I have been wanting to do something with recommendations.

Cheers

siquick10y ago· 2 in thread

Heres an outstanding answer on Stack Overflow on how to implement Collaborative Filtering in MySQL

edit: link included

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2440826/collaborative-fil...

aaossa10y ago

Where? :o It seems like you forget the url

siquick10y ago

added!

1 more reply

dserban10y ago· 2 in thread

One of the Spark-focused EdX courses[0] has a very good module on Alternating Least Squares, that will help you understand how to build recommender systems in a scalable way with Spark.

[0] https://www.edx.org/course/big-data-analysis-spark-uc-berkel...

xkyOP10y ago

This looks good but it's starting late 2016. Are there any old courses you could recommend?

dserban10y ago

[1] http://bugra.github.io/work/notes/2014-04-19/alternating-lea...

This looks like a good introduction to ALS, albeit Python/Pandas centric.

vaibkv10y ago· 1 in thread

Why don't you try and read some research papers on this topic and then decide how you would want to build your algorithm? Some links -

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...

http://insight-centre.org/sites/default/files/publications/1...

http://users.cis.fiu.edu/~taoli/pub/p125-li-sigir2011.pdf

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1303.0665v2.pdf

http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=129...

https://www.ntnu.no/wiki/download/attachments/71733389/WEBIS...

A chapter dedicated to the subject -

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds/ch9.pdf

psyklic10y ago

Here are a few more applied papers/articles:

+ Hulu: http://tech.hulu.com/blog/2011/09/19/recommendation-system/

+ Amazon: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~samir/498/Amazon-Recommendations.pdf

+ Spotify: http://www.slideshare.net/erikbern/collaborative-filtering-a...

vojta110y ago· 1 in thread

Good luck!

xkyOP10y ago

Thanks for the encouragement :)

aaron69510y ago· 1 in thread

What you are wanting to do is very hard.

Netflix offered a million prize for a movies recommender and then proceed to not use the winning solution.

Don't underestimate it. It's a large investment, don't think of it as a side part of a project. It's the project.

I did the coursea course mentioned in the other comments and it was ok.

If I was you I'd look at some sort of hack. Using mods or something. If it was possible with software on something common like news it'd be open sourced already.

eshvk10y ago

SOURCE: I work in Spotify doing music recs.

lazyant10y ago

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective-Intelligence-Bu... has a chapter on recommendation systems

xkyOP10y ago

HN delivers. Thanks for the recommendations. I decided to start with Coursera to get a lay of the land then dig deeper from there.

rajacombinator10y ago

Pretty trivial really. If you can't deduce the principles, building one from scratch may be inadvisable.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse