Enhancing the scalability of distance-based link prediction algorithms in recommender systems through similarity selection

Abstract

Slope One algorithm and its descendants measure user-score distance and use the statistical score distance between users to predict unknown ratings, as opposed to the typical collaborative filtering algorithm that uses similarity for neighbor selection and prediction. Compared to collaborative filtering systems that select only similar neighbors, algorithms based on user-score distance typically include all possible related users in the process, which needs more computation time and requires more memory. To improve the scalability and accuracy of distance-based recommendation algorithm, we provide a user-item link prediction approach that combines user distance measurement with similarity-based user selection. The algorithm predicts unknown ratings based on the filtered users by calculating user similarity and removing related users with similarity below a threshold, which reduces 26 to 29 percent of neighbors and improves prediction error, ranking, and prediction accuracy overall.