A Novel Algorithmic Similarity Measure for Collaborative Filtering: A Recommendation System Based on Rating Distances

Abstract

Internet sources contain a vast amount of information about items that people desire to purchase. It is impossible to evaluate these resources and come to an informed decision. People need automated systems that evaluate previous information and propose item alternatives. Recommending items using a smart system, which is based on the previous user preferences, has growing importance since the available product data is exponentially growing. Additionally, it is difficult to find new and correct things that a user would like among this massive amount of data. To make accurate recommendations with a smart system, researchers and practitioners use collaborative filtering methods with similarity calculation based on user preferences. The crucial point in collaborative filtering is to find a valuable measure that resembles correct similarity between users. The current similarity metrics in the literature have some disadvantages in conducting accurate recommendations. To improve the recommendation performance, this study proposes a novel similarity measure that assesses the distance between the user’s ratings and the median score. Considering distance from the median score is essential since some users may prefer to rate close to the median rather than the extremes. Experiments were conducted with a famous collaborative filtering dataset. Results showed that proposed similarity measure demonstrated superior performance regarding the recommendation accuracy. Implications of our results for XYZ are discussed.