An Exploratory Study of Hierarchical Fuzzy Systems Approach in A Recommendation System

Abstract

Recommendation system, also known as a recommender system, is a tool to help the user in providing asuggestion of a specific dilemma. Recently, the interest in developing a recommendation system in manyfields has increased. Fuzzy Logic system (FLSs) is one of the approaches that can be used to model therecommendation systems as it can deal with uncertainty and imprecise information. However, one of thefundamental issues in FLS is the problem of the curse of dimensionality. That is, the number of rules inFLSs is increasing exponentially with the number of input variables. One effective way to overcome thisproblem is by using Hierarchical Fuzzy System (HFSs). This paper aims to explore the use of HFSs forRecommendation system. Specifically, we are interested in exploring and comparing the HFS and FLS forthe Career path recommendation system (CPRS) based on four key criteria, namely topology, the numberof rules, the rules structures and interpretability. The findings suggested that the HFS has advantagesover FLS towards improving the interpretability models, in the context of a recommendation systemexample. This study contributes to providing an insight into the development of interpretable HFSs in theRecommendation systems. Keywords: Fuzzy Logic Systems, Hierarchical Fuzzy Systems, Recommendation Systems