amazon’s recommender system is sure winning me over
i used to feel some of that “oh, the computer can’t really Know what i like… they’re just trying to idolize technology and woo me with the gee whiz factor”
but as the recommendations get better and better, and i think about it more and more, i realize that well-instituted recommender systems are a great example of Not idolizing technology. it’s just smart use of data that is generated by the behaviors of actual people – the people do the determinations of relevance and the computer computes.
that’s the kind of division of labor that excites me.
and i find books i otherwise wouldn’t know about!
my wish list overfloweth!
the “we’ll start thinking that the whole universe is what amazon thinks and have a harder time discovering the margins” argument doesn’t hold a lot of water with me, i have come to realize, because i alReady have a hard time discovering the margins, and i think that there are ways to build new discoveries in. then it’s a “how do we make sure people are listened to” debate, though, not a “do recommender systems work” debate, and that’s good to keep straight, because the first one is a major priority.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:08 pm
The Amazon recommendation system is pretty fun to play with. I’d sort of had it as a hobby of mine for a while to rate as much as I could just to see what would happen. The end result is that it’s actually pretty good at figuring out what I like, but not quite as good at figuring out what I don’t like. (i.e.: marking something as “not interested” doesn’t really seem to have a lot of effect to indicate that you’re not interested in that type of thing)
Current counts:
Items you own (847)
Items you’ve rated (2169)
Items you’ve marked “Not interested” (836)
March 24th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
i think amazon’s recommendation system is wildly ridiculous.
case 1: the gold box. is this an effort to clear out inventory or to get me to buy something? either way, i’d encourage them to not put items i already own in the gold box.
case 2: one time buys. i don’t shop at amazon often. but i did buy some books on kilimanjaro years ago for my dad. and i STILL get recommendations on kilimanjaro.
i guess i need to use it more. but i can’t say i’m motivated. i tried fixing some of it once and it took too long.
March 26th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
The gold box thing seems to have varied in its purposes — for quite a while it did seem to be mostly a way of trying to get people to realize “Hey, I never new Amazon carried that sort of stuff”. More recently, though, it does seem to have been pulling in more of the sorts of things that come from the edges of your recommendations — though the last time that I checked it, I was back to the home defibulator kit and some other misc. stuff.